


Always

by Aganisia



Category: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Some Drug Use, Some profanity, Vampires make terrible parents, Violent Scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 50,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1301479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aganisia/pseuds/Aganisia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t thought any of this through, which was strange because he thought everything though. He never invited people to stay, and never made snap decisions if he could help it. Why then had he been so worked up over taking this child in? If Eve hadn’t been there to help him he may very well have only had an old sofa to offer her. But maybe it wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. Maybe he had been hoping for something like this to happen...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Medina

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes a phone call can change everything.

 

Adam had managed to go for eighty four years without any fatalities and nearly forty four years without turning anyone. I was a personal best. But now he would have to start all over again. The hunger had taken over and they had fed on the young couple, so viciously that they had barely been alive when they’d left them. And now they were cursed to slowly become like them, to constantly be trapped by the constraints of hunger and darkness, if they even survived the transformation, the alternative was a slow and lingering death from some mysterious illness. He could blame the current situation on his state of starvation or on some animalistic survival instinct or even on the fact that the sun was about to rise and they were pressed for time. All of those things were true, but that didn't mean that he hadn't enjoyed it. It had been so long since he had fed from the source. It had been stupid and reckless. Anything could have happened back there, but it hadn't and the two of them would go on to live another night, the excess of blood would buy them some time to find another supply, a week or so, perhaps more if they were lucky. It was hardly the worst problem they'd encountered nor would it be the last.

He was beginning to feel the after effects as he came down from the state of unparalleled ecstasy that feeding brought him. The girl had been clean for the most part, A +ve (nice enough but very everyday), but she was a smoker which tainted things a bit, and left him feeling pretty disgusting, as though he had been drinking out of an ashtray. He couldn't sleep; he had been controlling his intake for so long that the sudden rush was a shock to the system. If they weren't careful they could slip back into old habits, which was why it was imperative that they found a new supplier, and soon.

Eve stirred in his arms. Normally in these situations she would be the one comforting him, but today he could only hold her until she had cried herself to sleep. He had never seen her like this, she was meant to be the one who had it all together, and he was meant to be the wreck. They overslept long into the evening, still jet-lagged and deeply troubled from the last few nights. The moon hung high over the Medina in a sky stained orange and brown from light pollution. When was the last time they had seen a pure sky? Not for a long time, their kind couldn’t exactly live that far away from humanity as much as he might have liked to.  

“What time is it?” Eve mumbled sleepily from somewhere under the covers.

He reached out blindly for the bedside table and checked the time on Eve’s phone.

“11:26, fucking hell.” He saw that she had three missed calls and one voice-mail from a number he didn't recognise. He held up the phone. “Who’s this?”

“I don’t know.” She played the message back. And Adam froze as a voice he thought he’d never hear again began to play through the tiny speaker. It was exactly as he remembered, frozen in its youthfulness for all eternity.

“Evie? I don’t know if you even use this number anymore. Um, it’s probably nothing but I've been having some crazy dreams lately, about you, and this girl I used to know who claimed she was your sister. Anyway, I can’t say I’m not a little worried. Please phone me back on this number and let me know if you’re all right.” The message ended.

“Ada.” Eve whispered, seemingly as shocked as he was.

“You've been in contact with her?”

“I send her postcards. Every time one of us moves I send our new contact details to the old house. She’s never replied before.”

“Why would she call you and not me?” Adam said, perhaps a little belligerently.

“You don’t have a mobile phone, my love.” Eve pointed out. “Should we call her back?”

“What you think just because she had a few nightmares and got worried, that suddenly all’s forgiven and we can play happy families?”

“Adam…” Eve began.

“No, she made her feelings perfectly clear and she won’t want to see us.” He cut her off.

“Who said anything about seeing; I was just going to put her mind at ease. And mine.”

“She said she never wanted to speak to us again” he snapped. Under the circumstances he didn’t blame her.

“She had just been born; it’s a difficult time for anyone. Don’t you remember how troubled you were when you were at that age?” she was right, Adam might have had a pretty gloomy personality but he was practically a ray of sunshine compared to how he used to be. “She might have settled down by now.” There was a long silence. “Please, It’s only a phone call. Don’t you wonder how she’s doing? After forty years of nothing.”

“Of course I do. I just… How can you be so optimistic about this?”

“Because Kit is gone and Ava is out of control and I would like to find out if the last remaining member of our family is all right. I mean, it’s tough when you’re starting out, and it’s not like how it used to be in the old days, there’s so much more you have to do now to stay under the radar.”

“All right, all right. You phone her though; I don’t think she’ll be too thrilled to hear from me.” He said reluctantly as she called the number back.

"Ada?...” he heard her say, though he could only hear Eve’s side of the conversation. “Oh my darling, how are you?...Oh yes we’re fine, just a temporary supply problem, nothing serious…. Yes, I know it can be a little frightening sometimes, it’s just the psychic connection, it’s completely normal…Why yes, I suppose it is bit like that…Yes he’s here, would you like to talk to him?...Oh of course he does, don’t think like that? Honestly the pair of you I could bash your heads together… Look, I’ll put you on speaker phone.”

 “No, wait! Eve don’t. Eve?” the voice from the message suddenly returned, sounding panicked.

“Ada.” Adam said, quietly.

“Adam, hi.”

“Hi.” He was at a loss for words. “This is... unexpected.”

“Yeah, I was worried. I’ve been getting some spooky signals lately. Sorry if I bothered you.”

“Oh of course not, you know you can contact us anytime, sweetheart, day or night. Well, not day, but you know what I mean.” Eve butted in.

“How do you know about Ava?” Adam asked, if she had done something to her heads were going to roll.

“She just showed up at your old house one day back in seventy seven, looking for you two I think. We formed a band and I won’t bore you with the details but she drained my supplies, stole my songs and three people died including our drummer.”

“Yeah, that sounds like her.” He was glad they’d thrown her out when they did, Eve wouldn’t have been too thrilled if he had put a wooden bullet through her sister’s heart.

 “Oh dear, you must tell us absolutely everything. Are you still in London?” Eve asked.

“Oh no, I moved out. London’s got a bit of a… gang problem at the moment, if you know what I mean. I’m living in Liverpool now. It’s nice, easy to blend in.” so that was her wilderness.

“Oh how lovely, I gave a lecture there once at the Victoria Building, is it still there?”

“Yeah, but it’s an art museum now.”

“What about your music, are you still working?” Adam asked, getting back to the really important question.

“I’m…on hiatus. I can’t seem to find the inspiration anymore.” Came the reply. What? Fucking unacceptable! “What about you, I could have sworn I heard something of yours recently at some dive bar. It had your fingerprints all over it.”

“How could you tell?”

“It was too morose to be anyone else.”

“You always were my harshest critic. What do you mean hiatus? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it just, started to cause problems, people were asking questions, so I decided to disappear for a while.” She paused as though deliberating over whether it was a good idea to say what she said next. “You know if you’re going through a rough patch I guess you could come and stay for a while. We could talk properly.”

There was a long silence “Or if you’d rather not travel at the moment, I completely understand. I certainly learned about that the hard way.” The thought of her having to learn everything on her own made Adam’s heart clench painfully ‘of course if she’d bothered to stick around and hadn’t gone off in a sulk, that wouldn’t have been a problem’ some horrible part of his brain though. ‘yeah, but if you were any kind of father you would have tried harder to get her back.’ Said an even worse part of his brain.

“Well, I can’t speak for Adam but, I don’t think there’s anything left for us here anymore.”

There was a long silence on the line as both women waited for his answer. The thought of a reunion sent a thrill of excitement through him. The possibility that the three of them could be together again was more than he’d dared to hope for and the fact that they had an invitation, even if it was only a temporary one meant the world to them. It was a different bond to the one he and Eve shared, over the course of their marriage, their love had always been his one constant, the thing that always caused them to drift back together no matter how far apart they roamed, it had been the only thing he could accept without question in an uncertain world. But the bonds between parents and children among their kind were fragile things, more thorny with conflict, but still born from love.

 “Do you know, I’ve never been to Liverpool.” He said finally, cautiously, though it wasn’t really much of an answer.

“All the more reason to come. I could show you George Harrison’s house.” He loved George Harrison.

“I’d like that.”


	2. Ullet Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strained family reunion.

* * *

 

He had met her one late afternoon in the winter of 1967. He had been disorientated from getting up so early, and while his kind could stay awake during the day as long as they stayed away from sunlight it was not a state that came naturally to them. They had been introduced by a friend of her mother’s who also happened to work for him on occasion and had heard her play. After some pestering he had agreed to meet the child after school. Adam hadn’t taken on a student in nearly a century, not since that whole Mahler thing. He generally tried to avoid children at all costs, they tasted too good and they were easy prey, the base instinct to carry them away and drain them was deeply ingrained in his system. But you couldn’t just lure street urchins back to your lair anymore, humans these days tended to notice when their kids went missing. Now instead of killing them he was teaching them piano and violin and bringing them tea and biscuits (kids liked those, right?) that he had nipped out to get the night before, which wasn’t easy considering most shops closed before six.

‘Now you must be Adelaide. It’s good to finally meet you, I’m Adam.’

‘It’s nice to meet you too, but everyone calls me Ada, you know like Ada Lovelace.’ She said, a little nervous at being left with a stranger, or perhaps subconsciously she knew she was in the company of a being that could kill her in seconds if he wanted to. He wondered how on earth a thirteen year old in an ugly school uniform could possibly know about Ada Lovelace. 

‘What a coincidence, I used to know a girl called Ada Lovelace.’ He had replied, not elaborating that said girl was the actual Countess of Lovelace aka Byron’s daughter, and that she had been as delicious as she had been clever and far more interesting than her arsehole of a father had been. ‘Did you know that when she was about your age, she tried to build a flying machine?’ the fact about the kid’s namesake peaked her interest and for a moment she seemed to forget about being afraid.

‘Did it work?’ Ada asked.

‘She never finished it but the theory was on the right track. I hear you’ve been building things, too.’

‘Me? There’s just this old electric organ thing in the shed. I’ve been fixing her.’ She said.

‘It’s a girl?’

‘Granddad thought so, he called her Miss Vera.’ He would have to ask her more about the model later. He had encountered a lot of Hammond organs back in the US but they were harder to find across the pond, particularly the older models.

‘Well, I happen to enjoy fixing things too. If you ever need help with something, don’t be afraid to ask.’

‘Okay.’

‘Now, why don’t you play me this song I’ve heard so much about?’  
  


* * *

 

After settling Kit’s affairs and securing the house, they left for Ada’s place. Neither of them really felt up to the journey but luckily it was only five hours or so and could be done in two nights. It was a little risky to travel in such a sorry state but Ada had promised them some premium stuff. It was a pretty selfish reason to go, but regardless of how civilised they claimed to have become, blood would always be priority number one. It could be all love and roses on minute, but the second their supplies ran low they would be at each other’s throats, or more to the point at other people’s throats.

They found an evening flight to Lisbon then another flight to Manchester the following evening where they would have to bribe the nearest taxi driver to take them on the last leg of their journey. He would never be able to get used to travelling by plane, all that recycled air, the noise, the feeling of being trapped, the almost complete loss of energy, and the horrible, almost constant feeling of motion sickness (that supposedly affected all of their kind but Adam could have sworn he got it fifty times worse than anyone else). It was still better than boats. Adam despised crossing water. In the old days you were stuck below deck for weeks while the crew tried to figure out why they were losing so many men overboard. 

“Maybe this is a bad idea.” He mumbled, as Eve eased his fingers from their death grip on the armrest and interlaced them with her own. “What if she changes her mind and turns us away?”

“She won’t.” Eve whispered. “But I still have our key to Crowndale Road, you know just to be on the safe side.”

“I swore I’d never go back there.”

“I highly doubt you’ll have to, my darling.” Eve said. “This is the girl who opened a vein for you. That’s practically the oldest covenant we have, it can’t be broken.”

At long last they were finally dropped off outside the large house on Ullet Road. It was a blockish detached classic revival job with twin bay windows on each side of the front door, on the edge of a large and stately park. It was the kind of house that would normally be turned into flats or student bedsits, a remnant of a wealthier time with its blackened brickwork and the columns on either side of the front door topped with sculpted faces disfigured by time and polluted rain. There were a few dim lights on behind the drawn curtains, all mains power of course, fucking zombie shit; he would have to fix that later.  
He thanked the driver, giving him another generous tip just to be on the safe side, and fetched their things from the cab, walking through the spitting rain up the front drive. He was stalling, waiting for Eve to make the first move and ring the doorbell so he wouldn’t have to. All through the journey he kept trying to think of what he would say, how to apologise or explain himself. What could he even say anyway? 

Ada technically belonged to them both according to their laws, but he had met her first, he had been the one to initiate things and he had borne the brunt of her anger. In all his long years of life, he had never met a more promising student, a true child prodigy, nothing but raw talent and intuitive creative understanding. Her grandfather had been a reasonably successful jazz musician in the twenties and thirties, her mother had briefly pursued a singing career, and she had spent her childhood surrounded by music. Before everything went wrong, all he had needed to do was nudge her in the right direction and she would create wonders. He longed for those happier times, even though this whole fool’s errand would probably all end in tears. But that’s what happened when his kind forged those kinds of bonds, they weren’t built to have families and loved ones and yet a part of them would always yearn for it, always being stuck between not being able to live together for long and hardly being able to bear living apart.

The front door opened and suddenly he could hear his own heartbeat ringing in his ears. He kept expecting her to have grown when he tried to picture what she might look like, he could almost imagine her as a middle aged woman with wrinkles and reading glasses and children of her own who had already grown up and left home. But in reality, she was exactly the same as when she left them, frozen in time, stuck in a state of perpetual puberty, disarmingly youthful. She had just turned seventeen when it had happened, at a stretch she might have been able to pass for a university student. She was petite, catlike, with dark hair and darker eyes, and the same unnatural pallor and emaciation that afflicted their kind. She was wearing jeans and a grey sweater that had seen better days. He noticed her hair was still reasonably tidy, but over time it would grow matted, dry and brittle just like his.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d come.” She said softly.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Eve cried and pulled her into a crushing hug. “Oh, my little one.” The girl hesitated a moment before returning her embrace, her small hands gripping the ivory leather of Eve's jacket. Adam approached as they separated, feeling a little awkward when the two of them could just get along so easily and he was…well, him.  
“Please, come in.” Ada said, taking one of the bags from him and leading them inside without ceremony, as though they hadn't been estranged for forty years. “You must be tired.”

They crossed the threshold into a small entryway surrounded by stained glass and tiled floors in black, white and orange in some pale imitation of ancient Greek design jumbled up with Victorian gothic. The walls were almost completely covered by those cheap Ikea bookshelves filled with books, records, CDs and every kind of movie on DVD or VHS tape.

He remembered her being a film nut, her grandfather used to take her to the pictures every Saturday when he had been alive. Later on when she had moved in with them they had tried to keep up that tradition but they could only go to evening shows. As a teenager, Ada had liked those midnight screenings of hammer horrors and all that low budget trash. She would always claim not to be scared but sometimes when there was a particularly grisly scene she would grip his hand tightly or bury her head in his shoulder. The light from the big screen stung his eyes a little so they had made a strange pair, a man wearing sunglasses in the dark and a clearly underage girl going to see Night of the Living Dead together. She had said she didn’t see that much difference between the humans and the zombies, and he had laughed for the first time in months. The nickname had sort of stuck after that.

The inside of Ada’s house was much like any other vampire’s house, every window covered with heavy curtains or blinds, clutter and bric-a-brac on every available surface, and a healthy layer of dust on everything. Over the years things just accumulated, until it was time to move on to the next place. 

“What a beautiful place.” Eve cooed contently, glancing around their surroundings. She held up her gloved hands “May we?”

“Oh, yes. Yes of course.” Ada said but looked hesitant as they removed their gloves and Eve reached out to stroke her hair. Eve was more powerful than their whole family put together when it came to reading things, and her touch took some getting used to. 

“Oh, we have been learning, haven’t we?” Eve marveled and reached down to grip Ada’s hand and joined it with his. Through the brief touch of skin he received a few faint glimpses of forty years of the girl’s life, her early projects, the incident with Ava. “You’re a natural. Who knows Adam, give it a century and maybe she’ll be better than you.”

“Maybe.” Adam realised he hadn’t spoken yet. Through Eve’s link he saw a sprawling city filled with lights and people, somewhere in China maybe, he couldn’t tell for sure, he saw the terrified face of a young man then suddenly the link went silent.

“Ok yeah, it’s still weird.” Ada said, quickly pulling away from them.

  
“Sorry darling.” Eve said awkwardly.

  
“I made up a room for the two of you. It’s the one on the top floor, to the right.” Ada changed the subject.

  
“Well, why don’t I take up our things and you two can catch up.” said Eve, giving him a small nudge in the small of his back. He gave her a panicked look but she was already climbing the dark oak staircase.

  
He followed her into the kitchen, which looked more like a laboratory, especially since the fridge was filled with blood packs and petri dishes with some sort of gel in them. There was a workbench in the corner with more petri dishes piled up in rows along with several plug trays, tiny sprouts beginning to emerge from below the soil.

  
“Orchis Morio. I found some seed pods on the green and thought I’d grow a few. The secret is isolating the corresponding fungi. Are you hungry? I splashed out on some of the rare stuff.”

  
“B1+ve, how did you get this?”

  
“There’s a big transplant centre a few miles away. I mostly stick with Type O but they have a rare blood bank on ice, it’s like the pope’s wine cellar down there I kid you not.”  
“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, why did you invite us here? Why now?”

  
“I don’t know really, I suppose it’s beginning to sink in that I’m really in this forever. I don’t really want to go it alone anymore.” She paused a moment, carefully measuring out the blood into three wine glasses. “So what exactly is going on? Eve mentioned you were having some trouble, and that music of yours...”

  
“What about it?”

  
“It gave me the impression that you were writing your own funeral mass.”

 

 

 


	3. Somers Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe Christopher Marlowe was one of us.

 

Adam froze. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her he’d started thinking that way, not yet anyway. It had been his self-destructive moods that had caused the situation they were currently in. Ada had never exactly been the sort of person to beat around the bush though and he couldn’t exactly abuse her hospitality by lying to her.

“Well, it was just the way I was going creatively. There’s nothing to worry about.” He said, trying to sound reassuring but somehow failing completely.

“Are you sure, because I remember the last time you finished something.” Ada said crossing her arms. If she was angry, it didn’t show.

“I’ve written stuff since then.” He said; although there hadn’t been much worth finishing. “Anyway, that’s not the point. I’m fine now, these things just come and go, you know. You mustn’t worry about us.”

“I do worry.” He had worried about her too. On some strange impulse he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and hugged her close. He had always avoided touching her before, it had always felt too dangerous. But now there was no more hunger beneath the affection, no more rushing blood and beating heart and she smelled of family instead of prey.

During his last brush with oblivion, sometime in 1970 (or was it 71) he had worked so tirelessly that he had barely fed for three months, drinking only when moving became painful. Eve had returned to the states some months earlier to work on another of her books, as a visiting fellow at Harvard this time in the classics department. He had been left despondent and morose, wondering how she could drift away and leave him so easily when the thought alone almost made him sick with anxiety. The two of them had something of an open marriage, but he hadn’t been with anyone else since the twenties. Eve on the other hand, well he wasn’t exactly sure, nor did he really want to know. It didn’t bear thinking about really.

He remembered that Ada was supposed to be at boarding school in Letchworth when it happened. But he had lost track of time and the holidays had drawn close in the blur of music and despondency. They had found it hard to keep up with things like school when they had somewhat foolishly taken her in as their own after her mother’s hospitalisation. The maddening scent of a human child in the house, their conflicting waking hours and the need to consider things like cooked meals and central heating and a hundred and one other things that came with being alive had been a struggle to say the least, and that didn’t even include that awful boy that was always sniffing around her. What was his name? John? Jed? Something with a J?

They had tried their best and the girl practically took care of herself, an unhappy hangover from the neglect of her former life, but after a while they had all sat down and decided that the current arrangement wasn’t working and that Ada would be better off staying in school accommodation and returning for the holidays and the occasional weekend. Her absence broke his heart a little. No more midnight double features, no more marathon writing and recording sessions where ideas flowed like water, he would even miss staying up till morning so he could make her a packed lunch and send her off to school. He didn’t like the idea of her learning with some second rate music teacher, or getting malnourished from disgusting school dinners.  She would be grown soon, and would either leave them and live her own life or become one of them, and Adam couldn’t bear the thought of either.

It was in the midst of this empty nest that he had finished editing the recordings they had been working on together, then collapsed in the studio he had built in the basement and slept for what felt like weeks not really caring if he woke up or not.

If Ada was about to argue with him more she didn’t get the chance as Eve chose that moment to come downstairs. He pulled away from the hug awkwardly, but judging by the smirk Eve sent his way, he hadn’t been quick enough.

“Orchis Morio! My darling, how beautiful.” Eve cried, brushing a finger over the tender leaves. “You’ve always had green fingers though, they’re very happy.”

“Really? How can you tell?” Ada asked, handing her a glass and passing another one to Adam.

“Oh it’s all in their hormones, low ABA levels and whatnot. You’ll learn to read them eventually.” Said Eve, “Speaking of reading, I’m glad my library is in good hands.”

“I know, I should have asked first, but they were getting damp in the London house and I didn’t want to see them ruined.”

“Oh there’s no need to ask permission, sweetheart. You know you can take as many books as you want. Mi biblioteca es su biblioteca, remember?” Eve laughed. Back in the sixties Eve had spent many an evening in her study helping her with her homework, and when it got too boring she’d tell her stories of all the fascinating things that didn’t make it into the history books. Eve was not especially creative, or perhaps it was that she had lots of ideas but had trouble manifesting them.  She had dabbled in the arts from time to time, writing and painting mostly. Some of her short stories were quite remarkable, and had made it into magazines and anthologies here and there. But Eve was a born scholar at heart and a patient teacher, which was where her talent truly lay.

Before long the night leaked into day outside and the light turned from orange to pale grey. They had fed a little more than usual since they had gone without for almost a week.  The rare blood type was too good to waste, a million times better than the girl in the medina, something to be savoured. The three of them settled down into an easy state of bliss as he sat on the Persian rug in Ada’s living room propped up against the couch that the two women were occupying. Ada sat on the left, her head rolled back against the back cushion, Eve lay across with her head in Ada’s lap, one of her hands trailing through his hair keeping his thoughts from floating away.

“I can’t believe Christopher Marlowe was one of us.” Ada said, after Eve had recounted everything she had been doing for the past forty years.

“Oh, you’d be surprised how many famous people from history have gone through the change.” Eve laughed “You’re part of a proud tradition.”

“So, did you turn him or?”

“Oh no, he joined the family later on.” Eve explained, sometime in the 1770s if Adam remembered correctly.

“How does that work?”

“Well, it’s hard to explain. You see, we were once a very powerful family back in the day. We can do things others can’t, like read things by touching them and talk to each other through our dreams. Lilith, my mother was thought to be one of the first of our kind, possibly even _the_ first. And for a long time she had a lot of children and supporters and allegiances. Now, you know if you bite someone but don’t kill them they will eventually turn, right?”

“Right.”

“Have you ever turned anyone, Ada?” Adam asked.

“No.”

“That’s probably best.” He mumbled.

“Now, the transformation time varies depending on how much blood they’ve lost, it could take a few hours or it could take months; that’s the way we generally do it because you’re not obliged to take care of them afterwards.” Eve continued sleepily “However, if the human gives their blood willingly and drinks our blood in return, they become bonded to us, they inherit our gifts, and they become like family. Or alternatively you can perform a blood oath and join a family that way. And that’s what happened with Kit and I, he would have been all alone otherwise and he was such a sweetheart so we just thought, the more the merrier.”

“That’s amazing. Do you know I saw the drama society at the university put on a production of Doctor Faustus a few years ago. They were actually really good, normally they just do musicals.”

“To Kit.” Adam said sadly, raising his glass “And all his secrets.” the others joined him in his toast.

“And to new beginnings.” Eve added and sat up, wrapping her arms around Ada’s neck. “We have a lot of lost time to make up for.”

* * *

 

Eve returned to London on the evening of February 13th 1967\. She had not set foot in the city for decades, but if she had been pressed to say she had a home, she would probably choose here. It was where Adam had been born and later born again. It was where they had held their first wedding in 1666, which had ended rather abruptly when one of the guests (Ava) had set everything on fire. Since then they had renewed their vows every hundred years or so and wedding number four was overdue. Unfortunately they hadn’t spoken since that whole Paris incident nearly fifty years ago, which was a precursor for what was quite possibly the worst fight they’d ever had. A part of her felt nervous to see him again. Usually a little time and distance helped clear the air after their quarrels but what if this was the exception and they couldn’t work things out? Well if he turned her away she could always visit Jane Austen in Hampshire for a while.

Adam’s current house was in the area formerly known as St Pancras, but a few years ago the council had merged the area with its neighbours to form the borough of Camden. He had bought the Georgian terraced house shortly after the French Revolution where he had met and possibly had an affair with Mary Wollstonecraft. Now it was his main recording base after he had come back from Tennessee a few years ago. This was why this run down little borough held so much appeal for her, despite its squatters and its council houses; she loved it because it represented a chapter of Adam’s story.

Adam answered the door and all of Eve’s worries left her as she found herself pulled hastily inside and engulfed in his arms. There was no real need for words; the touch of each other’s hands said everything. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry too. I missed you so much.

* * *

 

“Do I smell food in the house? Have you finally started entertaining again?” Eve said as they lay naked on the William Morris sofa.

“Not exactly.” Adam replied awkwardly. “I’ve decided to take on a student.”

“I thought you said you’d never teach again after that whole Mahler thing.”

“I know what I said, but this is different.” Adam said slowly as though he was choosing his words carefully. “Ada’s, I don’t know, she’s different. Not self-conscious of her own ideas.”

“So she’s a girl, is she?” Eve laughed knowingly “I see.”

“No no no, it’s not like that. It’s definitely not like that, she’s thirteen years old.”

“Well that would explain the Puffin Club magazines, not that they don’t do some fine work but it hardly seemed like your area.” Eve laughed “But seriously darling, are you sure that’s a good idea? You know what it’s like with children.”

“I know it’s risky, believe me, but if you listen to the demos we’ve recorded you’d understand.” Adam insisted.

“Got her slaving away in your basement already, have you?” Adam definitely had a more practical approach to teaching, in his opinion musical theory was something you learned as you went along.

“Well, when you put it that way it sounds all kind of wrong.” Adam with a rare little huff of laughter “But seriously, I only see her for a few hours a week, and in a few years she’ll smell just like everyone else and it won’t be a problem anymore.”

“In a few years they’ll be a whole new set of problems.” Eve mused. “I know you regret that you were never able to have children, my love. But this, this is madness.”

“I’m just giving her music lessons.” Adam said dismissively, but she knew he was lying. He had already, in only a few short months, grown too attached. It was as though his skin was screaming it, that he was no longer just Adam her husband or Adam the musician but Adam the father. Eve sighed, knowing it was already too late. She could only hope they could last long enough to see her into adulthood without turning her.

“I think I would like to meet this girl.” She whispered.


	4. Midtown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I didn't know you were married.

Chapter 4

Detroit - 2013

“Listen, I’ll do my best with the Supro, Adam.” Ian said in that half-awake mumble of his, understandable since it was nearly four in the morning. “But those particular models are getting harder and harder to find in working condition you know.”

“Just do the best you can, and let me know if you need more money.”

“Well what if I have to go to auction? Do you have a limit?”

“Like I said, don’t worry about the money. If you really can’t find a working one just do the best you can and I’ll restore it. And if you find anything else from that period that might be interesting, go ahead and buy it.”

“Sure, no problem, man.” Ian nodded; he was used to his eccentricities by now. Adam considered offering the man a coffee but if there was any left in the kitchen then it had to be a least twenty years old and probably not fit for human consumption. That and the stove didn’t work and all he had was a Bunsen burner and a rusty kettle. “So why the sudden interest in Valco?”

“I’m looking for a distinct sound.” Adam replied absentmindedly.

 It had been nearly a decade since he had heard anything new by her, although back in 2004 she had dropped an album out of the blue and the zombies had all lost their shit over it, especially since she had refused to appear in public to promote it, only agreeing to a phone interview on a radio show called Front Row (that he may or may not have listened to online and cried over). It may have just been his imagination, but every time he released something, she would put something out there in return. The music would always contain some sort of tiny acknowledgment, some variation on a theme like when they used to bounce ideas off each other in the basement studio. It wasn’t so much a communication per se, more like a reflection, or a signal, like those aliens from Close Encounters. All it seemed to say was ‘I’m still here’ but it was enough. Now it had been ten years with no reply. He didn’t want to think about what that might mean.   

“I didn’t know you did photography.” Ian said, somewhat out of the blue picking up some of the pictures from the mess on the table.

“Well I don’t really.”

“These are pretty good, super retro; they look like they were taken in the sixties or something. Hey, I didn’t know you were married.” Shit, he forgot about the wedding photos. He had been rummaging through them before Ian had arrived, probably because he liked to torture himself or something. Ian must have assumed they were recent with some stupid filter on them since he hadn’t aged since the pictures had been taken. They were from their fourth wedding in 1968 where it had just been them, Ada, and that bloody guitarist she used to hang around with, where Eve wore that ivory shift dress and he had worn that ridiculous jacket and it had rained all night.

“Oh yeah, that’s Eve. We’re sort of separated at the moment.”

“That’s too bad, man.” Ian squinted at the picture and flash of recognition moved across his face. Although whether it was the girl or guitarist he couldn’t tell. “Hey, is that-?“

“No. No it isn’t.” Adam said angrily, snatching the photograph out of his hands and sweeping the rest into the shoebox he kept them in. If Ian was offended he didn’t say anything. That was the main reason he liked the guy, he was easy going, he put up with his outlandish demands, and he knew when to stop asking questions.

* * *

 

Liverpool - 2013

The dream was back, this time it was angrier. Ava had obviously not taken their rejection too well and now she was royally pissed off and searching for somewhere new to stay. In the old days, before the blood contamination had become a problem and when their family had been large and powerful, the dreams had been an almost daily occurrence. It was how families communicated with each other before phones were invented, like some kind of psychic bulletin board. Adam had always hated the dreams, he had never exactly approved of the others and their old fashioned and bloody practices and he definitely didn’t want to be given reminders of them every time he fell asleep. But now that there was only the four of them left, and three of them didn’t feed enough to muster the energy to do it, he almost missed the strange flickering images and voices of the others.

 Were all the families like this, or was it just them? He knew that the contaminants had decimated their numbers all over the world and only a handful remained in the major cities, fewer still in the smaller cities. As far as he knew he had been the only one in Detroit, and Kit and Eve had been alone in Tangiers. He suspected Ada was alone too in this crumbling port city. As if that wasn’t bad enough it was getting harder and harder to turn people these days. Eve had heard that less than half of them survived the change and those that did often died within a week for one reason or another if they were left on their own.

Adam opened his eyes to total darkness, his head resting against Eve’s bony knee. Although it was dark, his night vision was closer to a cat’s than a zombie’s. For a moment he forgot where he was and panicked but then remembered the previous evening, the flight, the drive, the awkward greetings and the truly spectacular blood. Yes he remembered now, they had finished the rare stuff and he and Eve had gone to bed when they realised it was almost noon. The clock on the bedside table now read 6.38. He felt tired and stiff from sleeping in such an odd position and dried out with thirst from the flight.

Blood made him ramble when he had company and he would talk about stupid things that no one else found that interesting like particle physics and the finer points of violin making. He loved to talk about those kinds of things and Eve loved to listen. To his surprise Ada was exactly the same way. It made him feel a little less guilty about seeing her feed as she babbled about the invention of the electric keyboard.  In a sick way it made him feel happy that they had these little traits in common, in the same way that he had liked how they looked kind of similar, same dark hair same serious expression, so that every now and then he could pretend he wasn’t a cold hearted killer and she really was his child.

The more blood one consumed the more powerful they could become, but the downside was that the thirst grew more powerful with every increase in intake and you needed more and more blood to keep going. It was classic chemical dependence. He may have sneered at all those substance abusing musicians he used to work with but really he was no different. In order to stay alive and function in the most basic capacity they needed to consume at least 30ml of whole blood a day. He could make one blood pack last about two weeks on his own if he needed to, but with the three of them feeding together they would burn through the supply a lot quicker. Back in Detroit he had made the trip to the hospital roughly every six weeks, making sure he never a kept to a schedule in case he got caught.

Dr Watson would give him four 450ml insulated canisters of O-ve, as much as he could take and consume before the blood got too old and went bad. Where Watson procured the blood was not his concern, only that it was properly tested and processed. The poor doctor might have had an inkling of what he really was, on a subconscious, primal level, most of the zombies he met seemed to feel uncomfortable around him, but logic would have created other speculations about him since the truth was so hard to believe in this modern age. Perhaps he was performing illegal surgeries for the criminal underground or was part of an organ trafficking ring or both.

It had been so much easier before the advent of modern medicine, before all the blood contamination, the pollution, the new diseases, and even newer drugs. Back in the day, one only had to masquerade as a physician, prescribe a little bloodletting, and disappear into the night with the spoils. Adam had eventually learned quite a lot about medicine during that time and had even genuinely helped some people thanks to some rather wild ideas about infection from his friend Richard Bradley. Yet another ruined scientist that he could add in his ledger of lost heroes.

* * *

 

London  - 1967

“Shit, it’s nearly eight.” Adam said looking at the clock, they were supposed to have finished two hours ago. “I’m sorry, I lost track of time.” It was sometime into their third week of lessons and Adam had felt it was time to begin recording a few demos. He was very proud of the studio he had built in the cellar. Some of the equipment had been bought at great expense with the proceeds from his song writing career in the fifties but most of it he had built himself as well as a makeshift vocal booth and soundproof walls and ceiling insulation. It was a dark and stuffy old room and he would sometimes wake up down there with a dry mouth when he was working on his own, having lost track of time and dosing off long after the sun had risen over the city outside.

“It’s all right. It was fun. It’s good to have something to play back, you know.”

“Exactly, this isn’t about making a finished track; it’s about experimenting with ideas and referring back to them later to inform your finished piece.” He noticed her yawning “But it’s about time we finished.”

“Ok.”

“Don’t you think you should phone your mother? She might be worried.”Adam asked. The first time she came round, her mother had picked her up afterwards, but since then the girl had made her own way home on the Northern line. That was all very well at six but it was well into the evening now and he was responsible.

“She’s out tonight.”

“Oh. I can drive you home if you want?”

“Thank you. That would be nice.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes, very much.”

“I don’t have any food in the house.”

“I don’t either.”

“I’ll have to take you out, then.” He said.

“That’s all right. I don’t have any money at the moment.” Ada said nervously, putting on her red wool duffle coat over her uniform, both of which were old and baggy. She reminded him a little of a stray kitten. Giant eyes, that was probably it.

“It’s no trouble. Come on.”

He took her to the coffee bar around the corner that advertised all day breakfasts. Ten years ago it might have been trendy but time had given it a distinctly downmarket look with condensation on the windows and dirty floors. She ordered the full English with extra toast and a coca cola. He ordered a cup of coffee, mostly just to appear more human. He couldn’t eat or drink anything that wasn’t blood, or at least he could but he would only vomit it straight back up again within an hour.

“Don’t you want anything?” Ada asked.

“No, I’m fine.” He said.

“I’m sorry to put you out.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He laughed and pulled out a ten shilling note from a roll of banknotes in his jacket pocket and paid the woman at the till.

“So were you really in America?”

“Pardon?”

“America, David said you used to live there.” David was his manager and had been the one who convinced him to meet her. Probably some cynical bid to groom new talent for the record label.

“Oh yeah, I was in Tennessee for a while, then Detroit. My wife’s living in New York at the moment.”

“Why don’t you live together?”

“Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t.”

“Because of work?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Of course.” Adam said as the waitress brought them their order. He was going to elaborate but was distracted when the girl began stuffing her face like she hadn’t eaten for weeks.

 “Christ! Don’t they feed you at home? Take it easy.”

“Mum doesn’t get out of bed much these days.” Ada said matter-of-factly through a mouthful of fried bread. It worried him, she might have been on the verge of growing up but she was still a kid and he didn’t like the thought of her being left on her own.

“Oh.”

“I’ve never had breakfast for dinner before. It’s like we’re breaking the law or something. Are you going to eat those?” she pointed at the small packet of amaretti biscuits that lay untouched on his saucer, next to the black coffee that was slowly going cold.

“No, you can have them.” He said, sliding them across the table.

“Are you a drug addict?”

“Certainly not, whatever gave you that impression?”

“You never eat anything, you’re easily the palest person I’ve ever met, you wear sunglasses at night.” Ada listed off. Adam took off his glasses self-consciously and regretted it instantly as the fluorescent lighting stung his eyes. “Then there’s all the cash you carry around. You’re a rock musician; they tend get involved in that sort of thing. And your house looks like a squat.”

“I’m not an addict.” Adam said flatly. He was lying, his kind were probably the worst kinds of addicts and sitting in that hot café full of warm flesh made him ravenous. “And how I keep my house is my own business.”

“Sorry. Oh, and you smell funny.” She added as an afterthought.

“Well, don’t hold back, kid. Tell me what you really think.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way, just, I don’t know….funny. Like an old coat that’s been left at the back of the wardrobe.” He noticed she had cleared her plate within a matter of minutes.

 “You done?” she nodded and they went back to the house.

“What kind of engine is that?” Ada asked as he started the car, it was a black Fiat 1500 he had tinkered around with.

“It’s electric. I built it.”

“What like a milk float?”

“I think you’ll find it’s a little faster than that. It runs on a battery charged from that generator I showed you.”

“It’s so quiet.” Ada said admiringly “So why are you a music teacher when you’ve invented something like this?”

“I didn’t invent it; this stuff’s been around since the 1820s. The oil companies just have a stranglehold on the industry. And I’m not a music teacher…normally. You’re an exception.” he pulled up outside her house. "Now go get some sleep, I'll see on you Monday."


	5. Woodside Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh that’s just great. The only person who’s even remotely encouraging in my life is a serial killer.

Chapter Five

London 1967

Ada shivered in the cold as she waited outside the house. It was just after sundown and a heavy frost was already beginning to hit the city. She had somehow managed to drag herself out of bed that morning even though it was cold enough to freeze the water in the toilet since they had to economise on heating. School had been even colder and Adam’s place might as well have been a ruined castle it was so drafty, but at least he had tea, and anything was better than going back to an empty house.

She didn’t really know what to make of Adam. At first she had found him quite frightening, although she wasn’t entirely sure why, just the thought of him skulking around that creepy old house like some sort of phantom set her on edge. But as the weeks rolled by and she had gotten to know her strange new teacher, he really didn’t seem all that bad. Perhaps he was only a little eccentric, untidy, and definitely out of his skull on something, like a mixture of Jim Morrison and Hamlet. He swore all the time, like literally all the time, perhaps more often than the boys in sixth form. She’d never heard a posh person swear before, come to think of it. Overall, she had concluded that he was probably harmless enough, mainly because he gave her food and didn’t really care if she practiced her scales or not.

She was about to ring the bell again when Adam answered the door sleepily, apparently wearing nothing but a mouldering old dressing gown, the kind that Ebeneezer Scrooge might wear in A Christmas Carol.

“Shit, is it Monday already?” he mumbled. Maybe there had been a mistake and she wasn’t supposed to come today.

“Yeah. Wait, did you just wake up?”

“Yes, and?”

“It’s four in the afternoon.”

“I get insomnia sometimes.” Adam huffed “It’s a sleep disorder.”

“Yeah, I know what it is.” She noticed that aside from the moth-eaten dressing gown there was a huge crimson bite mark at the base of his neck near his collarbone. Ada didn’t really know much about things like sex but she wasn’t completely in the dark about it, and that mark was definitely a love-bite, she’d seen some of the older girls bragging about them at school.

“And my wife came back from America last night.” Adam added awkwardly, as he noticed her looking.

“Oh! Well, um, I can just go home if you’re…” she blushed “busy.”

“What? No, no, of course not, I’m sorry. Come in.”

“Adam? Who is it?” she could see past him into the gloom of the house where a woman, also in a dressing gown, was coming down the stairs. She had thought Adam was pale, but this lady was the whitest person she had ever seen, not just pale but translucent white like porcelain, and her hair was so blonde it looked white too.

She wasn’t really sure what to expect when Adam had mentioned his wife, she sort of assumed she would look like those rock stars’ girlfriends that were in the paper sometimes, who wore mini dresses and lots of mascara like Marianne Faithfull. This woman looked older than Adam, maybe even older than her mother, although she couldn’t guess exactly.

“Eve, this is my new student I told you about. Ada, this is Eve.”

“Adam and Eve?” Ada raised an eyebrow “What, no apple?”

“Yep, never heard that joke before.” Adam sighed. “I’ll just go and get dressed, I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Ada, it’s good to meet you.” Said Eve and shook her hand. She felt a spark of something at the touch of the older woman’s ice cold skin like a small static shock only instead of lasting for a short moment the feeling lingered after she let go. It was a weird feeling that spread up her arm, shoulder and neck until her head throbbed with the pain of it, like her thoughts were being rifled through like an old wardrobe. It made her dizzy.

“Hello.” Ada said squeezing her hand into a fist, it felt like the pins and needles she got when her feet went numb. She had read somewhere that those feelings were a warning signal sent out by the body’s sensory nerves. A warning for what exactly, she didn’t know. There was an awkward pause between them as Eve looked at her with those odd blue eyes of hers as though making some sort of calculated assessment, like she was being viewed through an x-ray machine.

“Adam’s told me all about you. I haven’t seen him this excited in a long time.” Eve said finally. Inspection seemingly finished,

“Oh” Ada didn’t really know how to react to that. And her head was pounding so badly she could barely string two words together. “That’s nice.”

“I really mean it. That song you wrote was beautiful by the way. I liked the L.M. Montgomery references.”

“Oh, thank you.” She wasn’t used to compliments, and honestly she wasn’t entirely happy at the thought of Adam playing her song to people she didn’t know without her permission. Who else had he been playing it to? She leaned against the doorframe to steady herself. “I’m not much of a lyricist. I couldn’t really think of anything original. I’ll probably change it later.”

“Oh no, I thought it was the best part.”

“Um, thanks.”

“Do you like to read, Ada?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“Then, I have something you might like.” Eve said and beckoned her to follow her along the dark corridor and up the stairs, where Ada had never been allowed to venture before. Moving felt like the worst possibly idea right now but she didn’t want to seem rude so she took a deep breath and grabbed the banister.

From what she could gather the house had two living rooms on the ground floor, the front room was where they had lessons when they weren’t recording and was home to a baby grand as well as rows and rows of beautiful instruments from accordions to zithers. The back parlour was more homelike in appearance and had a few mismatched sofas and armchairs, a television, a record player (with an extensive collection of records, some dating back as early as the 1900s) and various books, antiques and miscellaneous junk. There was also the entrance hall, the staircase, and an extension towards the back that held a seriously naff kitchen complete with serving window.

‘Ghastly isn’t it.’ Adam had said the first time she’d visited. ‘They put it in after the building got damaged in the war.’ The basement studio which she had been told had originally held the kitchen and servants quarters was accessible via a rickety wooden staircase behind a hidden door under the main stairs. It also held the workshop and the home made generator for the house. Adam had geeked out when she’d told him about the AM radio she’d built using a pencil and a razorblade as a makeshift diode, and had spent at least an hour showing her the strange Tesla based wiring system he’d rigged up.

“Here we go. You know, he’s probably not even gone in here since the last time I was here.” Eve sighed, unlocking an old oak door on the landing and reaching into the gloom for the light switch. Ada gasped as the room was illuminated by the dim glow of the desk lamp. It was a library. Perhaps not a particularly well organised one, but there was easily several thousand books in there, probably a lot more. “Now where did I put those Anne books?” Eve muttered, scrabbling about in the boxes on the floor and through the shelved. The weird part was she didn’t even seem to be looking very hard, just brushing her fingers over the book spines as though the titles had been written in Braille.

“This is amazing.”

“Oh it’s just a mess at the moment. I keep meaning to reorganise it but, you know how it is. ”

“Jesus, how long have you been away?” Ada asked. The room was filled with so much dust she could hardly see the book covers.

“Longer than I intended.” Eve peered around a shelf and grinned. Ada noticed that Adam had come back and was now hovering in the doorway. “Oh there you are, my love. What took you so long?”

“Eve, you shouldn’t have brought her up here.”

“Why ever not?”

Adam scowled, “Ada, would you mind waiting for me in music room please.”

“Er, yeah. Right.” She backed out of the room. “Thank you for showing me this.” She said as she crept back downstairs feeling as though she had done something incredibly wrong. Just before she was out of earshot she could hear the distinct tone of an argument, not shouting exactly but it was definitely there, like when her dad had still lived with them and they thought she couldn’t hear them although nothing could be as bad as that. She couldn’t make out much of what was being said but she definitely heard Adam say “What if she’d seen something?” and as if that wasn’t suspicious enough she then heard him say “Where do you think I’ve been keeping it all this bloody time? In a wine rack?” A thousand crazy theories raced through her brain. What the hell was up there that she wasn’t supposed to see? Had Adam been lying all along and that room was where he kept all his drug paraphernalia? Did they have some sort creepy sex dungeon up there? She thought about those children who had been murdered in Manchester a few years ago and suddenly the harmlessly eccentric couple upstairs didn’t seem quite so harmless anymore, and the room was starting to spin.

‘Shit. I’m going to die in this house aren’t I.’ she thought. ‘Oh that’s just great. The only person who’s even remotely encouraging in my life is a serial killer.’ She knew she was being irrational, crazy even but the strange static-like feeling in her hands was still there. And just to top it off her stupid body decided to break out in a cold sweat, just sick and clammy, like what she imagined being poisoned might feel like.

She eyed the front door. Her gut told her to just leave and never come back. Free lessons be damned, she was getting some serious House of Usher vibes from this place. She was about to get up and leave when she heard someone coming down the stairs.

“I’m sorry about that. I just, well it’s just so messy up there, you wouldn’t believe.” Adam said as he entered the room.

“As opposed to the rest of the house?”

“There’s a lot of half finished building work and stuff up there, I don’t think your mum would be very impressed if you stepped on a nail or something.” Funny, it looked like a mess up there but she hadn’t seen anything resembling building work.

“You know what, I’m not feeling too well, at the moment.” Ada said.

“Really? What’s wrong?”

“Oh you know, just a headache.” Adam looked concerned and more than a little confused, as though such a thing was completely implausible.

“I think I’ve got some aspirin somewhere, hang on.” He grabbed what looked like a leather briefcase from by the front door. Catching a glimpse of its contents she realised it was a medical bag that doctors used. After rummaging around he eventually handed her a little brown bottle of pills.

“Adam, I don’t think these are going to work.”

“Why not?”

“Well for a start the label says they’re from 1918.”

“Oh. Right.” He took the pills back and began looking for something else. All the bottles and packets looked like they were at least fifty years old with those old fashioned art nouveau style labels.

“Bloody hell, is that morphine?” she was beginning to feel so light headed she thought she was about to faint, or throw up, or both.

“This? No, no it’s not.” He shut the bag hastily and put it away before she could argue.

“I think I’m going to be sick, can you tell me where the toilet is?”

“Oh shit, it’s not working right now,” for the first time since they’d met he seemed at a loss “Can you do it in the garden?” without even thinking Ada rushed out through the back door and out into the cold. The last thing she saw before she blacked out were the loose paving slabs of the old terrace.

 

* * *

 

Adam had known that introducing Eve was going to be difficult. Not that he didn’t want them to meet, he was actually a little excited about it. Even after all those centuries he still liked impress her with his projects and the accomplishments of his protégés. But Eve was something of a loose cannon when it came to humans, not so much a herald of chaos like her sister, he knew Ada would never be in any physical danger around her, but definitely unpredictable. He figured it was because she’d been around so long that she had simply stopped caring about what people might think of her. And this was probably why his new student was temporarily passed out on his sofa.

“You touched her didn’t you?” he sighed. He wasn’t all that great at reading things but if he could help it he never touched people’s bare skin without their informed consent. Eve on the other hand sometimes let curiosity get the better of her.

“Well…”

“Eve, why?”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think she’d react that badly.”

“Shit.”

“Aren’t you curious about what I saw?”

“No.” Adam said, then immediately did a one eighty “Why, what did you see?”

“She’s been left alone in that house for two weeks now, without any money.”

“Fuck. Really?” she nodded “Fuck. I knew something was off.”

“She’s beginning to get quite malnourished as well. I think that might be why it was so bad. My mother always said you should never read the sick or the elderly, or pregnant women. They always get ill afterwards.”

“To hell with your mother, what are we going to do about it?”

“You’re upset, so I’ll pretend you didn’t just say that.”

“Look, I know it’s not our place to get involved. I know the safest thing to do it to just stop everything and get out of here before she finds out, and let’s face it; she’s not stupid, she already suspects something. One of us on our own, that’s fine, they just think we’re a bit weird, but two of us? That’s suspicious.”

“Oh stop being such a drama queen. There’s no harm done, it’s all easily explained. Now don’t panic.”

“She already suspects something, okay. She’s clever, she notices things most people wouldn’t.”

“Would it really do any harm if she were to find out?” Eve asked “I mean, I know we’ve had some mixed reactions in the past but if you broke it to her gently it might be all right. Kit has taken on a student recently and apparently he knows everything.”

“No. Not yet.” She would probably have to find out eventually though. On his own he could just about get away with appearing human, albeit a rather strange one. But he knew with the two of them together she would figure out something was up in no time, if she hadn't already.

“What’s going on? What happened?” Ada mumbled as she began to stir.

“Oh you poor thing, are you feeling any better?” Eve said brandishing a plate of stale biscuits.

“You fainted.” Adam explained.

“Why is that always romanticised in books, it’s horrible.”

“Oh I’m sure Jane Austen would say the same thing.” Eve laughed and for a horrible moment Adam thought she was about to elaborate. “Have you been eating lately? Because I’d guess you’ve probably got low blood sugar.”

“But I felt fine a few minutes ago.” Ada protested

“Well sometimes it just sneaks up on you. Now, why don’t you let Adam take you home so you can get some food and have a nice rest. Maybe next time you're here we could pick out some books for you to borrow.” Eve was laying it on a bit thick, but the girl didn't argue and the two of them were soon out of the door and driving back to her mother's house.

Ada's house was a squat little semi from the 30s on the shabbier end of Finchley, what once was open pastures had become unrecognisable in its suburban conformity. The house used to belong to her grandfather until her mother inherited it a few years ago. He brought the Fiat to a halt under the muddy light of a streetlamp, noticing her mother's car still wasn't in the driveway and the lights were off, just like Eve had said.

“Do you want some tea or something?” Ada asked.

“No! No, I can’t stay long.” His self control was pretty good, or so he liked to think, but he would definitely feel more comfortable if she didn't invite him into her house.

“Ok. Well, see you on Friday then.” she moved to open the door but quick as lightning Adam flipped the central locking switch. “Adam, What the fuck.”

“How long have you been alone here?” he demanded. And the fear he smelled on her lessened as she looked at him with complete confusion, then anger, then fear again.

“Shit! How did you know that? Who told you? Was it Dave Martin? Because he doesn’t have a fucking clue.”

“It’s doesn’t matter how I know. Just answer the question. And could you ease up on the fucking language, please.” he realised how ridiculous he sounded, but he didn't care.

“Adam, I swear to God, if you dob me in to social services, I’ll tell the police you’ve been keeping drugs in your house.” Ada quipped. “Now unlock this door right now, this is going into some serious serial killer territory!”

“Jesus, you don’t mess around do you. Look, no one’s dobbing anyone in ok. No one's killing anyone. No one told me, I just, had a suspicion, ok? Because, well, I’ve been there before, when I was young. That and you smell like you haven’t done any laundry in a while. Now, how long has it been?”

“I ran out of washing powder. And you’re one to talk, that shirt probably used to be white.” Ada said angrily, he'd clearly scared her by pushing too hard, but he had never been very good in delicate social situations. After so many years of living apart from humanity, he had forgotten a lot of the finer points of how they worked. “About two weeks, maybe. It’s ok though, I’m used to it, mum sometimes has to travel for gigs. And you know, she said she’d be back by tomorrow.”

“She left you on your own for a whole fortnight?” Even a complete shut in like him knew that was pretty irresponsible.

“I’m not a child, I can look after myself.”

“I’m sure you can but that’s not the point. What if something happens and no one’s there to help you? Do you have any friends you could stay with?” He reached into his jacket pocket for the roll of banknotes he kept with him.

“I’m not a charity case.” Ada snapped. “And put that away, I don’t want your money.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m just concerned.”

“Yeah, well there’s nothing to be concerned about.”

“Please, just take it. Get some food in. If you want you can pay me back when you start selling records.”

 

* * *

 

Liverpool 2013

Ada awoke to the sound of the phone ringing. She shifted under her blanket with a groan and blindly scrabbled for the phone receiver. Startled into wakefulness as she was, it took her a moment to realise what the irritating ringing sound was. Aside from Eve a few days ago no one had called her in nearly a year. In fact she had given Linda, her PA, strict instructions not to give her home number out to anyone and to only call her in matters of dire importance and Linda being the smart businesswoman that she was had done just that. Finally she found the phone and answered, if only to stop the incessant ringing and go back to sleep, maybe this time without the horrible dream she’d had. It had been about that terrible gig she’d done in LA with Ava, and the even more terrible thing they’d done afterwards in the Continental Hyatt.

“Hello?”

“Lady Lovelace.” Only one person had ever called her that.

“James? How did you get this number?”

“I had a dream about you, love. That girl at your office gave me your number, I thought I might call.” Linda was so fucking fired.

“Ava didn’t happen to be in this dream of yours did she?” Ada asked. “That night on the Sunset Strip?”

“How did you know?”

“Shit.”

“What, you’re really starting to freak me out.”

“It’s not important. What do you want?”

“I want to see you. Why don’t you just tell me where you are?”

“No. No, no, no. I can safely say that out of all the terrible things that have ever happened to me, you were easily the worst, and I’m including becoming… the way I am on that list.”

“Oh it wasn’t that bad. You got to meet some cool people, play some amazing venues. You had all the teenage girls you could drink. Face it life was pretty good back then.”

“Please don’t remind me.”

“Ok fine, keep the location of your secret lair a mystery. I’m still in the same place, come and see me.”

“Shit really, you’re still in Berkshire?”

“Of course. Well, it's not my only residence, but I am there now. You should visit, it's been too long. You can tell me about your dreams.”

“Look, I can’t travel at the moment, I have company.”

“Really? Who?”

“It’s doesn’t matter, I said no.”

“Is it her, is that why you were thinking about LA?”

“What, no! Hell no.”

“Not Gomez and Morticia?

“I have to go now. Don't call me, I'll call you.”

“I understand you’re still angry but can’t we at least discuss this?”

“Goodbye James.”

Ada hung up the phone and retreated back under the blankets. It was too early in the evening to be dealing with this sort of shit. Vampire parents in the spare room, spooky dreams about past debaucheries, and an undead ex calling out of the blue? Why did this shit always have to come in threes?

 

 


	6. The Cut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An encounter with a weirdo Crowleyite.

Chapter Six

 

Berkshire

 

* * *

 

Bracknell - 1975

James Green's house was kept dark at all times and lit only with black candles if it was ever lit at all, which was rare. The housekeeper would always get nervous considering it was a giant fire hazard, a while back someone had almost set his room on fire after he fell asleep with a blunt in his mouth. Ada remembered this place from before, he had just bought it and had hosted a new years eve party that they had all attended. How he had managed to get Adam to agree to come was still a mystery but the night had been nice all the same even though someone had slipped her a mandrax and she had thought she was having a stroke. Adam had been furious and they had left before the countdown. Now it was seven or eight years later, the host was now one of the most successful musicians in the world and she was stuck on night shifts in a hospital and would remain there until someone worked out who had been stealing from the blood bank. She hadn't written or recorded anything in years.

“Come in, please. Welcome.” the man who answered the door had changed so drastically since she had last seen him that she almost didn't recognise him. She remembered him being quite handsome, one of those long haired heavy rock types who used to prance around the stage dressed as a bloody wizard or something. Now, he was only a few years older, couldn't be much older than thirty if she could hazard a guess, but he had grown so thin that looked like a withered scarecrow with eyes like saucers and pupils so dilated he reminded her of an owl. Jesus, she had known he had been partial to a bit of the old china white back in the day, but this was terrifying. But she thought of her own skeletal body and sunken cheeks and realised she really shouldn't be one to judge.

“Thanks.” she said warily and crossed the threshold.

“I wasn't sure if you'd come.” James said as he guided her into the living room. Besides the two of them,the house smelled empty.

“Well, you know how it is when you get a vaguely threatening message delivered by that thug of a tour manager you like to work with. How can a girl resist?” after finally running out of 'blood money' she had returned to Adam's house, which had long since been abandoned and boarded up. After managing to scale the wall and break in through the back door she had found the place to be almost exactly as it had been when she left it. Most of the instruments and recording equipment had been taken along with some of Adam's personal belongings. The heating and water had been disconnected and the strange generator Adam used for his electricity had been dismantled and taken away. But the place was still safe and secure and she could see alright in the dark now anyway, so she came to the decision to squat in the house for a while and rent out her mother's house for a bit of cash. This had been a bad idea, as her movements had not been as unnoticed as she had thought.

“Yes, I'm sorry about him. I didn't mean any disrespect.” he looked down at the floor sheepishly.

“Is this how you meet all your girls?”

“Not all of them.” he laughed “You look different.”

“I am different.”

“It suits you.” she rolled her eyes.

“So what's this about then?” she asked. She felt rather unsettled in this place, and while she had no doubt that she could take this guy down if she needed to, there was something frightening about the way he looked at her.

“Oh, please, have a seat.” he said directing her to a set of sofas and armchairs upholstered with a William Morris design but she preferred to stand. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Oh nothing for me thank you, I never drink...Jack Daniels.”

“Something stronger maybe?” James asked and handed her a silver hip flask. She could smell it before she even twisted the lid off and she reeled back in horror. She had been found out.

“Shit, what is this?” she shouted, her anger doing very little to mask how afraid she was.

“My Doctor. He knows people. It's clean I swear, straight from St Mary's General.” he replied. “Come on now, there's no need to be like that, I won't tell anyone.”

“You can't just give me something like this.” she cried, throwing it back at him as though she had been burned, he caught it with one hand.

“It's all right. I won't tell anyone.” he pushed “Take it.”

“Put it away, it's not safe.”

“I have so many questions. You wouldn't believe how long I've been trying to find you.” he started babbling, as though his life wasn't in imminent danger.

“For fuck's sake.” she punched at the nearest wall and felt something break. “I could kill you for this. Right now. I could rip out your spine and beat you to death with the tail-bone end.”

“You wouldn't beat me to death, I'd already be dead by that point.” he said, seemingly unfazed. “Did you just punch my fireplace in half? Why would you do that?”

“It was that or your face, Jim.” she snapped.

“That fireplace was designed by Philip Webb, it's solid marble. I think the face would have been preferable.”

“Oh.”

“So you really are a vampire.” he said eventually.

“Well that's kind of a loaded word isn't it.”

“Fine, what do you prefer to be called?”

“Ada.”

“Very funny.”

“How did you even find out about this? This is beyond insane. You know what never mind, I'm scared to even ask.”

“I'm curious. How old are you? If you don't mind me asking.”

“Seventeen.” she replied.

“How long have you been seventeen?”

“About five years.” she said bluntly. “Sorry, was that not dramatic enough for you.”

“Five years? So when we first met you were still...?”

“Yeah, you couldn't tell?”

“Well, I don't know. I just assumed.” he muttered “So did he... did Adam do this to you?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“He bit me. End of story. It's anti-climatic, I know, but Dracula got stabbed to death by an accountant, what can you do.” She didn't like how many questions he was throwing at her. Adam had warned her about people like this. Weirdo Crowleyites searching for eternal life.

“So that's all it takes. A bite? Just like in the movies. Like a rabies infection or something.” James said, like it all seemed too easy.

“Yeah, something like that. I think I even foamed at the mouth when it happened.”

“How long did it take?”

“You're full of questions tonight aren't you. You know, if I didn't know any better I'd swear you were researching how someone might turn out this way.” she snapped.

“I'm just curious.” he said defensively.

“I can smell fear you know.” Ada warned. She wondered if he would out her if she left right now. She couldn't kill him, that would be too noticeable. She could make it look like an overdose maybe, but the whole idea turned her stomach. If there was anything that freaked her out, it was needle drugs.

“What?”

“I may be new at this but a lot of people have approached Adam and Eve over the years asking them the same thing, with some strange and thoroughly misguided desire for immortality. It's generally seen as very bad form.”

“Well he turned you, didn't he?” James pointed out.

“I didn't ask him to. It was an accident.”

“That's convenient.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“He was pretty into you. I can understand why he'd want to keep you around. Looking like that. Young forever.”

“Don't be disgusting.”

“I'm just saying. I can understand.”

“If you're looking for some sort of paranormal expert you've got the wrong person. I don't really know anything more than you do. Now if that's all I should probably get going, I have to get home by sunrise.”

“Please just wait a minute, don't go. I know I'm probably persona non grata in Adam's books but we always got along, didn't we? I thought we were friends. Remember?”

“I remember we talked about Adam an awful lot, while you plied me with weed. I'm beginning to sense an ulterior motive.” she grumbled.

“You talked about Adam all the time anyway. No chemicals necessary. Talk about hero worship.”

“Oh.” she said, he was probably right about that.

“At least tell me a little about what it's like. What does it feel like?”

“It's hard to explain what it feels like. But I would say most of it tends to revolve around what's in that bottle.” she pointed at the flask, still in his hand. Had she been fixated on it this whole time? Probably.

“Oh! Is it bothering you?” he held up the hip flask and dangled it tauntingly in front of her.

“Yes it's fucking bothering me.” she snatched the bottle out of his hand so quickly he barely saw her arm move. “Do you have somewhere I could go, a bathroom or something?”

“Why can't you do it here?”

“Because, I might decide I want more and I would feel safer if there was a locked door between us.” she said and stomped out of the room.

 

* * *

 

 

Somehow as the evening drew on and she had worked her way through most of the bottle, she couldn't help it, she'd never had this much before and the effects were giving everything a beautiful warm glow while she floated on the warm red waters. It was easily some of the best shit she'd ever got her hands on. She could smell the weird burned out acidic scent on him and knew they had both over indulged. God only knew how long they had been out of it. The room was still spinning and there was music in the air as they listened to Joni Mitchell and for the first time in years Ada felt warm.

“So how old is Adam anyway?” how did they get here? They were both lying on the Persian rug staring at the ceiling, that someone had painted to look like a giant start chart. This house was the epitome of bad taste hovering between pre-Raphealite neo-gothic and new age kitsch. 

“I don't know exactly.” she replied.

“Guestimate?”

“Four hundred or so. He gets pretty riled up about the Civil War so I'm guessing he's from around that time.”

“Wow. He must have some stories to tell.” James marvelled.

“Yeah, did you know he was on the Titanic?” she laughed.

“Shit really?”

“Yeah he decided to swim for it but he couldn't make it to New York before sunrise and had to spend a day at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“You can breathe underwater?”

“We don't have to breathe. We just do it out of habit. You know, phantom lung syndrome or something.” she explained.

“That's amazing.”

“Compared to all the other stuff it's quite ordinary.”

“Right.” he laughed “Why hospital blood, though?”

“Because I'm not a bloody murderer, that's why. Jeez! You're just full of questions aren't you. I have a question, why were you looking for me?”

“It's a long story.” he said uncomfortably.

“Humour me.”

“Adam.”

“What?”

“I was following Adam.”

“I'm not following you.” she frowned.

“There's this, sort of urban legend on the music scene, about a man who is not a man who has travelled through the centuries who bestows the gift of music on a chosen few. Why are you laughing?” he said, realising she had burst into a fit of giggles.

“I – just- oh God, that's the silliest thing I've ever hear. I mean it's true, it's all true but... You're making him sound like the Phantom of the Opera or something. Which now that I think about it was also kind of true, but you know what I mean.”

“Wait, Really?” James looked at her wide-eyed “Adam was the Phantom?”

“Well, yeah. Where do you think Leroux got the idea?”

“You're pulling my leg.”

“Well he didn't live in a sewer or anything, but yeah he had an affair with a Swedish bel canto soprano by the name of Christina Nilsson and apparently it ended pretty badly. And that's all I know about it.” she concluded.

“Far out.”

“So what tipped you off about Adam then? What made you think he was this mythical music man?” Ada pressed. “I mean, besides the obvious of course. Wait! Is that why you wanted to work for us? Because you had some crazy theory about Adam.”

“He must have realised I was on to him. That's why he fired me.” James declared. Ada didn't know if it was the drugs talking or if he was just an idiot.

“Really? I thought it was because you tried to steal his songs.” she pointed out.

“Well...”

“He called you a filthy little plagiarist, and a nonce.” she continued.

“I promise you, I'm neither.”

“I heard different.”

“Anyway, I knew it was him because I found the blues records he did in the thirties. The ones with Robert Johnson.” James said conspiratorially and tried to get to his feet, presumably to find the record, but gave up and lay back down.”

“How the hell did you find those? I thought Adam was supposed to have the only surviving copy.” Ada said incredulously.

“Oh he played them to you?”

“Yeah, he played me his entire collection.”

“Christ you're so lucky.”

“I'm really not. He's got some weird stuff. Proper beard stroking music you know.”

“Oh Ada, you really have no idea.” he said condescendingly. “There are people out there who would kill to have what you had, and you're just wasting it all away.”

“I'm still thinking about killing you.” she warned. “It's not easy being like this, making music is not my priority right now.”

“Just hear me out first.” James interrupted. “Now it seems you have three problems here, one is money, one is finding blood and the other is connections. I am prepared to give you all of those things. I'm starting my own record label in the spring, it's mostly a tax dodge admittedly but I do need some new talent, and I want you.”

“And in exchange you want me to turn you. Right?”

“Got it in one, love.”

“I can't do that.”

“Of course you can, think about it, you get the complete package, the best promotions team in the world, complete creative freedom, a thirty grand advance and all the blood you could possibly want.”

“No, I literally can't do it. You're contaminated, I can't bite you.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying if you really want this, you're going to have to get clean.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Liverpool 2013

Adam crept down the three flights of stairs, edging carefully around one last beam of fading orange sunlight that shone through a crack in the curtains. It was grand old house, he remembered a time when transporting sugar and cotton and slaves had made the city richer than London, and the house was a relic of those times with its finely carved mahogany bannisters and elaborate plaster mouldings on the ceiling, both currently covered with dust and grime.

The soft sound of a lute playing drifted up from the ground floor. His lute in fact, the new one he had brought with him from Tangier, a bit of a hassle to take on the plane but after all the instruments he'd left behind in Detroit he had stubbornly hung on to it. The melody was J S Bach, he guessed, the Allemande from suite in G minor BWV 995, although parts of it were improvised when the player's memory failed them, but the parts that were guessed fit in almost seamlessly with the piece so that an unfamiliar ear would never notice anything was amiss.

It struck him how much he had missed Ada's playing. She had never been especially proficient with sting instruments before she had been turned, her main talent lay in the piano. But there had been a deeply intuitive quality to her playing where the technical skill had trailed off, a spark of something when she messed around on the guitar or violin, some kindling for a forest fire of potential if she had the dedication to pursue it.

After the change, skill was no longer a problem. Something about the brain, one's whole physiognomy was permanently altered. The mind could juggle an indefinite number of tasks, the senses could pick up the tiniest discrepancy in sound, practically feel the vibrations in the air, the body became strong and fast like a bullet from a gun and with perfect precision and accuracy. Adam could use these traits to stalk and kill his prey, but he preferred to use them to become a rebound virtuoso and guitar legend. Page? Hendrix? Fucking amateurs by comparison, but admittedly he had an unfair advantage.

The door to the living room was open so he stepped across the threshold into the dimly lit room. Ada was sprawled on the knole sofa, the old one they had bought from William Morris with the blue thistle design. She had a peculiar habit of sitting upside down with her legs dangling over the back cushions and her head almost touching the carpet. When she had been little, she claimed the rush of blood to the head helped her think. And now decades later she was doing the same thing as she slowly plucked the strings. It wasn't the new one, he realised, but it was still his instrument, at least it had been. One of the many he hadn't had the time take with him the last time he fled the country.

At the sound of his approaching footsteps the girl suddenly switched the melody to a shoddy rendition of A Wandering Minstrel I. He looked down at her and rolled his eyes.

“You've improved.” he said.

“Well it has been forty years.” she said with a wry smile and stopped her playing and righting herself. “Are you hungry? Do you want anything?”

“Oh, no thank you. I'll wait until Eve wakes up.”

“Will she be all right? What with Marlowe and everything.”

“I don't know. I think...I think she just needs some time. You've been a great help though, I think you called at just the right time.”

“Right.” Ada said. “You're up so early. It's not even dark out yet.”

“Yeah, I had a bad dream.” he said.

“You too?” Ah, that was why she was down here.

“Yeah. I'm sorry you have to see them. She's just angry because I threw her out.” he said, sitting down next to her. “It'll pass.”

“Did you and Eve ever make dreams like that.” she asked, he'd never had time to explain all the aspects of their existence, and since they were limited by how little they fed it hadn't seemed all that important at the time. But now that their paths had crossed once more and they had the luxury of time, he might have a chance to change all that.

“Yeah, sometimes, back in the old days. I mean, they weren't exactly like that, it was more of an emergency contact thing. You need a lot of blood to be able to do it.”

“I think Ava's looking for me.” Ada sighed.

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, she sort of reminded me of when we used go around together back in the seventies, you know. I mean, we had some good times. For a while we were inseparable, but towards the end... It's not something I really want to remember.”

“Look, Ada, we've all been there. Ava is...well, Ava is a lot of things, but one thing she isn't is a good friend. One night you're going round having the time of your afterlives, feeding left right and centre and life's all one big party but the moment some heavy shit starts to go down she's nowhere to be found and you have to deal with it on your own.” he scowled at the memory. “She's just a bad influence on people. Whatever the two of you did together, I can promise you I've probably done something ten times worse.”

“Really?”

“Oh definitely, the three of us had some pretty crazy times in the beginning. The Great Fire of London was partially my fault. During the Siege of Paris everyone was starving but it was harvest time for us.”

“Yeah that's pretty bad.”

“What I'm trying to say is, Living the way we do, you're going to fuck up now and then. And all you can really do is move on and try not to do it again, and try to dwell on it too much. Otherwise you'll just drive yourself insane. So what if you bit a guy in Japan. We've all had our... desperate moments? What do you think I was doing last week?”

“Yeah, I realise that. You're really not very good at giving life advice, are you.” she frowned. “And how did you know about Japan?”

“I saw it last night, when Eve touched you.” he explained,

“God, that's so creepy. Is nothing private when you're like this?” Ada rolled her eyes. He remembered what it had been like at the beginning, how weird it all was.

“Well, only if you're prepared to wear gloves for all eternity.” he joked.

“Oh believe me, I do. Ava had absolutely no concept of personal space.” Ada laughed, yeah he knew about that.

“I don't care for it much either. But, it's different when it's with someone you love.” Ada made a face “And I'm not just talking about sex. It's like they become part of you, and for a little while you're simultaneously yourself and that other person.”

“God, you're so embarrassing.” she hoisted herself to her feet with a groan. “Come on, I'm hungry.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

London 1967

 

Adam sat up in bed, his back resting against the ancient headboard waiting for the management office to answer the phone while Eve sleepily curled an arm around his waist disgruntled at being disturbed so early in the day. It was Friday afternoon, and Ada was due to come over later. Although, whether she actually would come back or not after what had happened earlier that week was debatable.

“Hello, David Martin's office.” came the tinny voice of a secretary at the other end of the line.

“Yes, could you tell him Adam wants to speak to him.” he said, his voice cracked sleepily. He wasn't used to waking up in the early afternoon. There was a long pause on the line and he could distinctly the woman say nervously 'well I can't tell him that now, he knows you're here'.

“Adam? Is that you?” came a different voice. A man this time.

“Yes, hello.”

“Calling me voluntarily, that is a turn up for the books, and during office hours no less. Has hell frozen over?” Dave laughed.

“Well I can call you back after midnight if you've grown accustomed to it.” Adam huffed.

“I'll be sure to stay up. So, how are those lessons going? I assume that's why you're calling, does she hate you yet?”

“I don't know. Probably.” Adam thought about the fiasco the other night. “We've recorded a few tracks already.”

“I told you she was good, right?”

“Yeah, she's great. Listen, I need you to get some things for me.” Adam said changing the subject.

“Anything you want, that's what I'm here for.”

“I think it's about time I reconnected my water supply. But I'm out all day at the moment, so could you arrange it for me?” lately he had been using a tank of rainwater on the roof to wash with, that he'd installed at some point in the eighteenth century. If he was going to go through with this crazy plan, he would need a place that was fit for human habitation.

“You haven't done that yet? Have you really been using the public baths all this time?” Dave asked.

“Um, yes. It's fine though, I haven't been at home much.”

“Why didn't you say something sooner? I'll call the water authority first thing tomorrow. Anything else?”

“I also need a boiler installed, and my gas reconnected.”Adam said sheepishly. At least there _was_ a gas line. He had quite a few houses around the world that didn't.

“You don't even have gas?”

“No.”

“But it's winter. You must have chilblains on your chilblains.”

“Um...yeah, it's not nice, I have to sleep with my boots on.” Was that how it worked? He barely remembered what being cold was like.

“Jesus.”

“ And I need some cleaning stuff, bleach, sugar soap, sponges, a vacuum cleaner that sort of thing.”

“So you're finally cleaning that shithole you live in. I was beginning to think you were one of those compulsive hoarders or something. I'll give you my cleaner's number, she's very good.”

“No, I want to do it myself.”

“Fair enough.” the man said incredulously. “I'll get that all sorted for Monday morning, all right?”

“I won't be in. You have a key, don't you?”

“Yes, OK fine, I'll do it.”

“Make sure nothing gets damaged.”

“Adam, the whole place is damaged. I wouldn't be surprised if it falls down!”

“I meant don't touch anything.”

“I will leave your endless boxes of wires alone.”

“Good. Oh one other thing. I've been writing recently.” Adam added, it was probably bad form to phone a music management company and not talk about music.

“I'm listening.”

“I think Ada would benefit from helping me put an album together, it could be an excellent learning experience.” he explained.

“Too right it would.”

“She'll get a writing credit, obviously. And I want to organise an advance for her and a share of the royalties.”

“Really are you sure? I mean she's just a kid.” What a fucking prick.

“She needs the money more than I do.” Adam said, he wasn't prepared to back down on this.

“That might be not be so easy. You've never asked for an advance before, the bigwigs at Atlantic won't like it. I think if they agree you'll have to be prepared to show your work as it were, and they're going to want you to work to a deadline for once, no disappearing for three years and coming back with hundreds of recording of Georgian folk singing.”

“That was one time.” he protested and Eve giggled against his side, obviously she had been listening to the entire exchange and had been awake all along.

Listen it's all fine when you're funding yourself, but they're running a business here. Can't you just arrange to pay her yourself?”

“Right well, the thing is, she won't accept it, if it comes from me. That's the problem. And frankly I have other financial obligations, so if they don't like it then just remind them of everything I've done for them in the past. All right?”

“All right, gotcha.” Dave said shakily. Adam didn't like making threats but when it came to those vultures, you had to stand your ground. “Maybe if you agreed to work with some of their guys during production, they might be a little more amenable. There's techs and session guys willing to crawl over glass to work with you.”

“Really? What a drag.” Adam sighed.

“Oh Adam, you never could play nice with others.” Eve mumbled, and suddenly the feeling of her hands on his skin flooded him with memories too racy to think about when your manager was on the phone. “Well most of the time, anyway.”

“Listen, Dave. I'll have to phone you back later.” he said quickly.

“All right, tell Ada I'm sorry I couldn't be more help.” Dave began to reply but he'd already hung up the phone. That was confusing. Why would she ask a guy like that for help. Was he referring to the advance money?

* * *

 

When the knock on the door came a few hours later, well over an hour later than their lesson was due to begin, he had almost given up hope. He was glad that Eve was there, he didn't really want to think about how he might have coped with something like that if he had been alone. Like that time at the Paris Conservatoire. No that was completely different. That had been a dark time for him and he had been prone to obsessive behaviour.

He opened the door, and almost breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Ada on the doorstep. Still too skinny but in a freshly washed uniform and new wool gloves without any holes in. Perhaps this meant that her mother had returned home and he could stop worrying so much.

“Hi.” he said awkwardly, ushering her into the hallway.

“Hello.”

“I wasn't sure if you were going to come back.”

“Neither was I really.” she confessed.

“I'm glad you did.”

“I'm sorry I was such a brat the other night. I was, I don't know what came over me really.”

“It's perfectly fine. You weren't feeling well, it's okay.” he reassured her. 

“No it's not, I feel like I've gone mad. You were only trying to help and I bit your head off. Thank you, by the way, for the money. You're a real life saver.”

“It was nothing. You know you can always come here if you need help with anything."

“I...there's another reason why I'm here. It's Mum, she's still not back.”

“What?” he growled. Who in their right mind would abandon a child like that. “I thought you said she was due back this week.”

“She was. And I'm getting worried. I skipped school today and literally called everyone in her address book. Do you know anyone who could help me?” she was almost in tears now, and he could see how bloodshot her eyes were.

“I don't know anyone, sorry. Well except maybe Dave Martin.”

“I've already tried him, he was about as useful as a chocolate teapot.”

“Shit.” that must have been what he was on about.

“I'm sorry, this is such a mess, you don't need to hear about my problems.”

“Stay here.” Adam suddenly blurted out. That hadn't been the plan, the plan had just been to put in a few creature comforts, so she could use the bathroom and not be cold. But as soon as he said it, he realised that was what he had had in mind all along.

“What?”

"I...um...I don't like you being alone in that house, so...stay here."

 


	7. Gainsborough Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But the reality of it, I'm telling you it's not worth it.

 

* * *

 

London 1967

For a moment Ada was too astonished to say anything. She knew Adam was a bit crazy, but this was something else and if she hadn't been so upset she might have laughed. But hadn't she been hoping for something like this to happen? She had never voluntarily told anyone about her home life before, she had been too ashamed, it was bad enough seeing the look of pity on people's faces when they found out her dad had left. As far as friends went, Adam seemed like an unlikely choice, but at least he listened to her.

“I can't stay here, Adam.” she said “I mean for a start you don't have a working toilet.”

“I'm getting it fixed on Monday.” he looked a little embarrassed at the criticism.

“...I'm going to need one before then.”

“There's a public one down the road. Look I know this place is hardly a palace but, why not? At least you won't be on your own.”

“No, that's not the point.” she said, and despite promising herself that she wouldn't cry anymore, she could feel tears begin to sting her eyes.

“I think what Adam means is that you're welcome to stay here for a while after we call the police and report her missing.” She jumped slightly when Eve appeared next to her seemingly out of nowhere. With all the creaky floorboards in the house it was a marvel that she could move so silently.

“No. No police. They'll put her away again.” she said, her voice wavering.

“Again? Sweetheart, how many times has this happened?” Eve said, suddenly very serious.

“A few. I mean, not often she usually comes home when she's supposed to, but... It was all right when granddad was still alive but now... “

“I see.”

“I'm not going back into care again. You don't know what they do in those places.” she was becoming frantic and the older woman's eyes softened. A decision had been made.

“You won't, I promise.” Eve said in earnest. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” surprisingly, she did trust her. Adam too actually. Even if they were both unlike any couple she had ever met and more than a little eccentric. There was something very stable about her, as though she had seen it all before and nothing could faze her.

“Then I promise you, everything will be all right.”

-

Once she had calmed down Eve had taken charge and had phoned the local police station and helped her to file a missing persons report. After some rigorous questioning and lying about the whole being left alone in the house thing (Eve had backed her up, saying she was a friend of the family and had been asked to look after her) it was finally over and Adam volunteered to help her fetch her belongings.

As they pulled up outside her grandfather's house, she would always think of it that way even though he had been dead for three years, she was glad the house was at least somewhat presentable. Not that Adam's place was any better, it was certainly a hell of a lot dustier, but granddad had been very house-proud and it had somehow passed on to her. It seemed as though no matter what she did these days the house would devolve into a chaos of dirty laundry and stale food and rubbish. The money Adam had pushed on her had been an obscene amount, enough to restock everything from food to cleaning supplies to soap and shampoo.

She had her reservations about taking money from a guy she barely knew, and even more reservations about staying the night in his house with his strange wife and ancient plumbing but at least she wouldn't be alone and wouldn't have to shoplift for the bare essentials anymore. The next day after school she had ransacked her local Woolworths, and where the other kids her age were buying pop records and sweets she had bought bleach and washing up liquid and bin bags and had literally worked through the night transforming the house from squalor to suburban paradise. She hadn't dared go into her mother's room, but the kitchen and bathroom had been thoroughly bleached, the mountain of mouldy dishes had been washed, the garbage had been bagged up and hidden in the back garden until the bin men came and the vacuum cleaner had sucked up so much dust and dirt and fluff she thought it might explode. She had washed four loads of laundry because being clean counted for nothing when your clothes smelled. It had been exhausting but it took her mind off things.

Like the fact that her mother was due back and still hadn't come home. But that was fairly normal, sometimes she was a day or two late and for some reason it never crossed her mind to phone home and keep her updated. She probably just forgot about her again. That was it, even when she was at home, she wasn't really there. She had never hit Ada or even really shouted at her, and on those rare occasions when she was switched on she could be the loveliest person in the world, but for the other ninety percent of the time she was either gone mentally, or just gone. By the third day, there was still no sign of her, and no phone call, absolutely nothing and she finally had to face the fact that it was happening all over again.

“I'm so sorry, that's two lessons I've messed up now with my problems.” she said getting out of the Fiat and fumbling for her keys and entering the cold, dark house.

“Oh don't worry, we've got a whole weekend ahead of us.” Adam said, trying awkwardly to present this whole nightmare as some sort of marvellous adventure. “We've got all the time in the world.”

“Aren't you coming in?” she asked, looking back to find him lingering in the doorway.

“No. I mean, I've got mud on my shoes.” Adam mumbled awkwardly. That was strange, why wouldn't he come in? Did the house still smell bad and she was just so used to it she didn't notice anymore?

“You can come in, you know. You don't have to hang around out there like some sort of creep.”

“All right.” Adam replied and stepped over the threshold. A strange irrational feeling of fear came over her, a feeling that the house was no longer safe like that time her mother had thrown that party and she had been too afraid to go downstairs and had just locked herself in her bedroom.

“I should probably leave a note. You know, in case she comes back.” Ada thought out loud although she had a sinking feeling that a note wasn't going to make any difference.

“That's probably best.” Adam said, peering around the shabby living room, his blue eyes resting on the Bakelite monster in the corner. “Is that a 1939 Novachord? That's the organ your grandfather left you?”

“Yes, it's nearly finished, but some of the vacuum tubes need replacing.”

“Oh, we're definitely coming back for that.” there was an implied 'if you end up staying' in the way he was talking, or more accurately a 'when you end up staying' that she felt was a little thoughtless.

“Right well I should pack.”

“Yeah, make sure to take everything you need.” she guessed that if the rest of Adam's house was anywhere near as empty as his kitchen she really would have to take everything and proceeded to pack all her personal belongings including her towels and bed sheets into her grandfather's old leather suitcase that still smelled of vertiver aftershave and cigars.

“Do you think they'll find her? What if she's in trouble?” she asked once she had finished packing and made her way downstairs, slightly confused that Adam seemed to have packed the entire contents of the kitchen into a cardboard box including the utensils, pans, and crockery.

“I'm sure the police know what they're doing.”

“What if she just decided to leave for good this time?”

“You mustn't think that way.” Adam reassured her weakly, but she could tell he didn't know what to say.

“It's just that, this isn't the first time this has happened. After granddad died...she just left me here, for a whole month, I don't know what she was doing maybe she had met a man or something. There was no money in the house so I had to start stealing. You can probably guess the rest.” she was crying again, and Adam looked like he was about to murder someone.

“A month? How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“But, didn't anyone fucking notice? Who the fuck does that to their own child!” she had never seen him so angry before, it was as though his whole face changed and she could have sworn that his eyes had changed briefly from their usual blue to a horrible reddish brown colour. The colour of clotted blood. Even though she knew it wasn't directed at her, she still flinched when he raised his voice. He must have seen it because he immediately stopped whatever tirade he was about to launch into and took a breath and he was Adam again. “I'm sorry, I'm not angry at you. People are just so fucking stupid sometimes.”

“They probably just thought I was grieving. I didn't exactly want anyone knowing about it. I got myself to school on time, I didn't cause any trouble, my marks were average, so no one thought anything was wrong. It's easy to get lost in the crowd.” she stopped herself, she didn't know why she was telling him all this. But she at least owed him an explanation for what he was getting himself into. “You noticed though.”

A pained look crossed his face as he suddenly pulled her into a hug. Ada found her face pressed into the soft leather of his jacket and cold gloved hands wiped her tears away. It all seemed a bit out of character when she realised that this was the first time he had ever touched her. He smelled like winter air and abandoned houses. They stayed like that for a few moments while she just let go of it all and cried. It was strange that she could hold herself together so well when bad things were happening, from survival instinct perhaps or adaptability. It was afterwards that she fell apart when everything was back to normal and it finally hit her how bad things had been.

“I'm sorry.” he whispered. “I should have done something sooner. You don't deserve any of this.” in a weird moment he reminded her a little of her grandfather as he practically repeated word for word what the old man would say in these situations. Even though he couldn't be much older than thirty, there was just something about the way he talked sometimes, those strange unconscious mannerisms that made him seem much older.

“Let's just get out of here.” she said wiping her nose with her sleeve.

* * *

 

Adam's house was a three storey terrace that had seen better days. It was at the edge of a quiet square, the trees that lined the road looking bare and miserable in the grey winter. There was a church directly opposite on the other side of the square but Ada had never seen anyone go in or out. In fact the whole area looked pretty run down and some of the buildings were even boarded up. One of those renovation projects people were beginning to buy up and throw out the squatters and vagrants.

The lights were on, and Eve greeted them from the utilitarian kitchen where she was making, or attempting to make a pot of tea. The stove didn't work, Ada had come to realise, as Adam tended to use an electric hot plate and an old copper kettle, he never had any milk and even after it was boiled his tea tasted like pond water. As she had suspected, staying here was probably a terrible idea. Beggars can't be choosers though.

“There you are. Oh good, you brought food. I tried going to the corner shop but it was closed.”

“Well it is getting late.” she sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the clock. I was nearly nine. She rifled through the box of food and kitchen things and made herself a sandwich with what was left of the bread and cheese, adding a generous spread of Branston pickle.

“I've made up a little bedroom for you on the top floor.” Eve carried on, looking at the black concoction she has just made with mild bafflement before setting it down in front of her. Ada peered into the cup and realised she had torn open the tea bag and there was a layer of soggy ground up tea leaves floating on the surface.

“Oh, that's nice.” she replied, pushing the cup away. She had never been to the top floor but she guessed it was probably as dusty and cluttered as the rest of the house.

“Which room?” Adam asked a little suspiciously.

“The one next to the bathroom that had all your paintings and junk in it. Turns out there was a bed in there, even had a mattress on it.”

“I haven't been up there in years. Almost forgot it was there.” Adam grumbled. Who the hell forgot about rooms in their house? The house was certainly impressive for that part of London but it wasn't that big.

“Now, Ada, my love, I need you to listen for a moment. We don't have many rules in this house, but there are some things you'll really need to respect, alright?” Eve carried on, if she was offended about the tea she didn't show it.

“Alright.” she replied, that seemed fair enough.

“First of all, the curtains and blinds stay closed at all times. Do you understand? Do not touch them under any circumstances.” well that was definitely not what she was expecting. Why the hell did they want to sit around in the dark all day, it couldn't be good for your eyes. And it was a waste of electricity, even if Adam did have his own generator that she couldn't even remotely figure out. Something about radiation from space?

“Okay.” Ada agreed a little incredulously. As if this place wasn't weird enough.

“Secondly, doors in our house are locked for a reason, don't try and open them. You can have the whole top floor to yourself, that's your own private space, and you're free to use the ground floor and the library but I would appreciate it if you didn't go in the other rooms without our permission.”

“Got it.” they were being very cryptic about all of this. Did they have a gun collection or something? Were they communist spies?

“Thirdly, if you want to bring friends back here you need to let us know beforehand.” Eve went on. “And if any … strangers come by the house while we're out, do not let them in. Don't even open the door, especially at night.”

“I don't exactly have many friends. But alright, yes, that's fine.” the part about the strangers seemed fairly obvious though.

“And now, this is the last rule I promise, I want you to keep this on you at all times.” She handed her a small leather case that contained a first aid kit, complete with two small vials of iodine and rubbing alcohol, and three blister packs of little green tablets that Ada didn't recognise. “I can't stress how important this is. Now, ideally I would tell you to just not hurt yourself, but that's not always possible. So if you do get a cut or a graze or a... nosebleed for example I want you to use this immediately.”

“Oh wow, you've really got everything in there haven't you?” Ada said, looking through the plasters and antiseptic cream.

“I just want you to be safe. We're responsible for you now.”

“Anovlar? What are those for?” she asked, inspecting the pills. She looked across at Adam but he seemed to be equally confused.

“They are...iron supplements. Very important. You'll need to take one every day, starting right now. I'm worried you might be a bit anaemic.”

“All right. I didn't realise you were such a hypochondriac.” Didn't iron supplements have the word 'iron' somewhere in the name? She didn't like the idea of taking something that didn't have a label on it, but other than the brand name and the dosage there wasn't any information for her to read. She decided that as soon as she was able to leave the house she would try to find out what it was, but Eve was looking at her expectantly and against her better judgement she popped out one of the pills and swallowed it with a sip of the disgusting tea.

“Thank you. Sorry to be a nag. It's been a long time since I've had to look after a child. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a little nervous.” Eve explained but didn't elaborate further. “Now why don't we have a look at your room?”

* * *

 

Bracknall, 1975

James Green liked to consider himself an open minded sort of man. There were always assumptions going around that musicians like him were all sexually depraved drug addicts and Satan worshippers, especially in parts of America. Well they may have been right about the drugs part, and when the women flocked to you it was hard to say no, but despite his interest in Pagan mythologies and alternative philosophies and the paranormal, he had never seriously believed in any kind of devil, or God for that matter. He just liked the stories.

But now there was a literal vampire in his living room, whose existence had only just that evening gone from tenuous suspicion to living, (not)breathing actuality, he felt the need to reassess his theological beliefs. Because watching the little girl he used to know and play music with turn into the creature that was slowly feeding in his presence was probably the most demonic thing he had ever encountered. Her sad dark eyes had turned muddy, almost red, there was a smear of blood in the corner of her mouth, and those teeth! And the way she moved now, so fast his brain barely registered the movement. How could he have assumed she was one of them back then when he saw what she had become now.

His search for her and the one that called himself Adam may have been crazy. He didn't know what he was looking for exactly. Guidance, perhaps? That elusive touch that could make a song immortal. At first he hadn't even known what they were only that Adam was some sort of genius musician and songwriter that everyone in the industry wanted to work with including himself. He had wanted to meet the guy ever since he had first heard his songs on pirate radio when he was nine and collected his records when he was sixteen and just starting out in little bands that never got anywhere. When he got into the session scene there were rumours, that he was living somewhere in London, that he was a recluse, that he was still recording in a studio he had built himself. He had to investigate further, to get a glimpse of the man who had inspired him so much, practically turned him on to music in the first place.

When he actually finally met the guy he had been thoroughly confused. Judging from his record releases he had to be at least sixty but the man who had greeted him looked like he couldn't be more than a few years older than him. Adam had explained the old blues recordings had been his father's work, but James had not been convinced. To the musician who paid close attention, Adam's hand could be found across a great many works other than his own and a great deal further back than just the thirties. The further back he looked, the more he found, even as far back as the 1600s to the work of a minor composer by the name of Adam Drese which brought about the bizarre idea that a lot of the composers he was studying were in fact the same person. They were all Adam, or at least all Adam's proteges.

By the time he had figured out what Adam really was after working for the strange man, immortality hadn't been that high on his wish-list, although he would readily admit that in theory it was a tempting prospect. It was more about the music, the knowledge, the experience. He didn't just want to record with the guy, he wanted to hear his whole life story, and the stories of all the people he had met. And he had wanted to see more of his 'daughter'. But now everything had changed.

“Now when you say get clean...?” James broached.

“Alright, so there's a few things you need to do to increase your chances of becoming...like this. The main thing you need to do is be uncontaminated.” the girl, or what used to be a girl sat up and looked directly at him. The light from the lamp behind him reflected in her retinas, shining back at him with an eerie reddish glow like some kind of nocturnal predator or a bad polaroid. She hadn't changed at all since he had last seen her. It was a little frightening, people changed over the years even if it wasn't noticeable, but Ada seemed frozen in time like the photograph he had kept of her in that little bridesmaid's dress, washed out by the bad lighting and not entirely in focus. Tonight she looked like some kind of homeless waif, in laddered tights and a grey moth-eaten sweater and a leather jacket that was worn and entirely too big for her. He suspected it might have belonged to Adam at one point. But despite her worn out and dishevelled state she still as youthful and awkward as any adolescent.

“Define uncontaminated.” he was probably as contaminated as you could get.

“That means no drugs in your system, no sepsis, no blood-borne diseases, no STIs, no leukaemia or related cancers, low cholesterol, normal blood sugar and insulin levels. Basically you need to be in peak physical condition, which might take some work.”

“Why is that?” James asked. Peak physical condition? If that was true then he was well and truly fucked.

“Mostly so I don't poison myself. I don't want any bad blood between us.” He understood now. Certain types of chemicals or pathogens in the bloodstream must be able to harm people like her, maybe even kill them. He guessed this was the real reason his people had found her working at that hospital, mopping floors on the night shift and stealing packs of O negative when no one was looking. Perhaps she was no better off than he was.

“So I don't need to be a virgin or anything.” he asked.

“No, that's just stories. But I've heard a period of celibacy before the deed can increase your chances of it working. Probably just hearsay though.”

There was that word again. He didn't like the sound of that word. “Chances? So it doesn't always work?”

“No, it's hard to tell what the odds are, it depends on the person apparently. Adam told me that the main part of it involves having a desperate need for survival to the point of leaving your humanity behind, and the rest is all circumstantial. How strong you are, how powerful the person turning you is and so on.” That sounded easy enough, he was willing to do just about anything to survive hence the immortal being in his living room. But his health was rapidly declining and she was barely old enough to be considered an adult let alone a powerful creature of darkness. But he didn't know of any others, and Adam and his wife had both disappeared without a trace, not that they would ever agree to see him anyway.

“Well what happens when it doesn't work.”

“You die a slow and painful death. Still keen to give it a try?”

“You're not exactly selling this, you know. But yes, under the circumstances, it's a risk I'm willing to take.”

“Well, I'm not. I refuse to do it. There is nothing you can offer me that will convince me to do it. And frankly I wouldn't trust you to take care of my cat, let alone my supply so you can take your deal and shove it.” Ada said. He didn't remember her being this assertive, but maybe having the strength of ten men was a confidence boost.

“Well if it works, it'll be our supply, so what reason would I have to skimp out on you?”

“I'll admit, this is good stuff.” she said taking another swig. “But it won't always be. It's difficult to find a stable source, and even harder if there's two of you. I mean who found this for you anyway?”

“My doctor. You've met Dr Grant, he's alright. He only sells the best.”

“There you see, I can't put my well being in the hands of corrupt tour circuit medic come drug dealer who calls himself Dr Feelgood.”

“Fine, forget the blood then, you can take care of it on your own if you want. The rest of the of the offer still stands.”

“Why on earth would you even want something like that. I mean granted, you have power and immortality, I can understand the appeal at face value. But the reality of it, I'm telling you it's not worth it.” she insisted.

“Ada, I understand what's involved.” he took her hand in his, it was cold like she had come in from the snow. “I know it's not exactly the best way to exist. But I need you to do this for me.”

“Oh shit, Jim. You're dying!” she worked it out, she had always been a clever one.

“Yeah.” her hands moved up his arms, his shoulders, his neck before finally clutching gently at his scalp, running through his hair. If he didn't know any better he would say it was an intimate gesture, but it felt too methodical, like an examination, as though she knew exactly where to look. She smelled strange, with none of the body odours that humans tended to have, a scent that made them unconsciously recognisable through the mixture of their sweat, skin and hair. The only scent he got from her underneath the residual smell of the hospital (carbolic soap and boiled cabbage) was something cold and slimy like a flooded river.

“Christ, that's the biggest malignant tumour I've ever seen. Not that I've seen that many. It's as big as my fist!” she marvelled, rubbing at the exact spot where it had shown up on the angiogram.

“You can feel it?”

“Yeah, I'm not very good yet, but I can read people's bodies fairly easily, and most living organisms. The mind on the other hand requires skill and centuries of practise.”

“What sort of things can you feel?”

“Well, the Glioblastoma obviously, that's pretty hard to miss. I can also tell that you have intravenously taken just over 50 milligrams of heroin, nearly sixty percent purity, not bad at all. You have the beginnings of bacterial endocarditis building up around your heart, you've stopped being careful since the diagnosis. You've also have traces of, morphine, vallium, carbamazepine, and alcohol, you probably shouldn't be taking all these things at once by the way. And you're also smoking an average of fifteen a day. You haven't eaten in over thirty six hours.”

“That's insane, can you really identify all that from my skin chemistry?” James said. “You've clearly been paying attention at that hospital of yours.”

“You pick things up.”

“So you probably know the prognosis then. If I'm lucky I've got about four months left, maybe up to a year if I go through with the surgery. Ironic really, I've been destroying myself for years and this thing just popped out of nowhere.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“I don't want to die, Ada. Not like this. I can't even play anymore, and there's so much more I need to do...”

“I can't turn you, James. It's too risky, for both of us.” Ada said, breaking a long and uneasy silence. “But there might be something else we can try. But I need you to promise you'll never tell anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Adam told me that our blood has healing properties. He made me drink some of his to speed up the transformation, but it can also be used to cure people's illnesses and wounds.”

“I've never heard about that.”

“Well, it's not exactly something we want publicised. Why would we want to give people even more reasons to hunt us to extinction.”

“Will it work?”

“I don't see why not. Hell, it might even get you clean again you never know. Shall we give it a go?”

“Yes! I mean, it's not like I have anything to lose at this point. What do you want for it?”

“This isn't some paltry drug deal, Jim. What I want is for you to keep your mouth shut if it works.”

“What if it doesn't?”

“We'll burn that bridge when we come to it. Now I need a sharp clean knife and a glass.”

“In the kitchen. Across the hallway.”

She got up and came back a few moments later with one of his Honyaki knives he had picked up when he was on tour in Japan, back when he still had an interest in food, and a sherry glass. He looked on in disbelief as she sliced into the flesh of her arm without even flinching and let her blood drain into the glass, so thick and dark it almost looked like crude oil. He almost threw up at the sight of it, or perhaps it was just the cancer, or a combination of the two. She could only manage to fill the glass half way before her arm had healed over, the wound turning from a scab to a silvery scar in a matter of seconds before disappearing entirely.

“I know, it's pretty disgusting. Just try not to think about it too much. Take it slow, alright.” She handed him the glass and held up her hip flask in a toast.

There was a strange feeling of a ritual to it all, an unholy communion as it were. Like some strange transition of power, as though in taking this offering he was inadvertently allowing her inside him just as he had invited her to cross the threshold and enter his house. The smell from earlier was emanating from the glass but even stronger this time, like the cold damp of an abandoned cellar or rotting leaves on a forest floor. Not unpleasant exactly, but not even remotely human. This was something dark and ancient. He closed his eyes and took a sip, and was surprised to find it was ice cold. He had been expecting it to taste like his own blood, warm, metallic and sickly, and he wasn't far off, but the rush that followed made him forget the taste instantly. James was a connoisseur of illicit substances, when you were rich and famous they were hard to avoid, but he had never experienced anything like this, not even with the big H which he had long since built up a tolerance to and now only provided a warm background radiation as he struggled to keep the withdrawals at bay. It was like his spinal cord had burst into bloom, like a tidal wave in his veins, like his first Elvis song, his first guitar, his first kiss, his first everything all at once.

“Did it work? How does it feel?” he heard her say, he tried to form an answer but it got lost somewhere in his throat and all he could manage was a short gasp. He opened his eyes and saw the painted ceiling turn into a perfect dawn sky with rosy clouds rolling in from the mouldings. She was looking down at him curiously, with her messy black hair and dark sad eyes that still haunted him. On the surface she looked exactly the same as when they had last met, when she couldn't have been much older than fifteen, but in this light with her blood on his lips, she seemed as old as the universe itself.

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” she smirked.

“Is this what its like for you?” he asked.

“Better.”

He felt her cold fingers touch his throat then move up to his forehead, like his mother used to do when he got sick. “You know, I think it might be working. It's beginning to recede.”

He could feel it working, the nausea had gone and almost instantly that horrible dragging worn out malaise and the numbness eased. For the first time in months he didn't feel like shit.

“Now I want you to eat something, can you manage that?”

“Yes. Yes that sounds like a good idea.” almost from the moment she suggested eating something, he realised how hungry he was. Before he had felt too rotten to do anything, and only continued to pour chemicals into his body because he knew not doing so would make him feel even worse.

“I'll make you something.” Ada said decisively.

It was one of those strange moments of disassociation as she led him to the kitchen and began looking through the cupboards and the refrigerator. There wasn't much there. He barely ate these days but his housekeeper still brought him groceries refusing to give up hope, even though she ended up taking most of the stuff home before it spoiled. Still she managed to throw something together. Fried potatoes, baked beans from the tin, and scrambled eggs. He reflected on how strange it was to have a vampire in his kitchen at four in the morning, making him dinner, or breakfast, whichever was closest.

“I didn't know you could cook.” he remarked as she plated up and served him the piping hot food. He had had no appetite in months but this dish smelled like the most delicious thing in the world and he dug in with relish.

“Oh, I'm hardly a chef or anything. But with my mother being the way she was and...well Adam was great but one time he sent me to school with a jar of mayonnaise for lunch. So it was either learn to cook or die of starvation.”

“Must have been quite an upbringing.” he said “I can't imagine him doing, y'know, everyday stuff.”

“Well, he tried.” Ada said but didn't elaborate and they spent the rest of the meal in silence as he ate and she packed the dishwasher. When he had finished she finally spoke.

“It's nearly sunrise. If you don't mind me staying, I'd like to monitor how you're doing for a few days. I'm really not familiar with how all this stuff works.” she confessed, and he was relieved that she wanted to stay, and that he didn't have to ask.

“I've already made up a room for you.” he said with a smile. “Heaviest curtains I could find. It's up the stairs, third door on the right.” He was about to get up and show her but she waved him away.

“Thank you, Don't worry I'll find it on my own. Don't try and wake me up. It may have dire consequences.”

“Why? Will you try and attack me?”

“No, I just get grouchy.” she smiled. "Goodnight James."

 

 


	8. Bedroom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello sorry it's been so long. I have been buried with PhD work.

Liverpool 2013

 

“Knock knock” Ada said awkwardly, tapping on the open door. Eve was already awake and had her nose buried in a book. Beware of Pity this time.

“Who’s there?”

“Ada.”

“Ada who?”

“Aid and abet.”

“Oh darling, that was dreadful.”

“I brought you something.” Ada carried on, noticing Adam had followed her up the stairs and poked his head around the doorframe. Eve smiled at his rather sheepish appearance.

“Well he’s nice but I already have one of those.”

“No.” Ada laughed and held up the bag of blood and three port glasses.

“Breakfast in bed? How lovely, and it’s not even mother’s day.” Eve set her book down and sat up against the headboard as Ada set the glasses on the bedside table and began to poor out the blood. She had a good deal going with one of the researchers at the National Tissue bank. He collected and processed the O –ve off the books, and she was the reason his student loans had been paid off. She had even donated a hefty amount of funding to the centre, if she was going to contribute to the blood shortage then the least she could do was invest in keeping people healthy.

When she floated back to earth after the rush had hit her, warm as a beautiful sunrise, the three of them were lying haphazardly across the bed. She was on Eve's left side, Adam was on her right. Eve wrapped a slender arm around her shoulders.

“Oh look at you, you’re like two peas in a pod."

"Are we?" Ada asked. She didn't think they looked all that alike, but people always seemed to accept that they were related in some way when she had been a child. And even afterwards, when she had run into a few of the others, people she had never met before they would always say 'you must be Adam's girl.' She hadn't understood back then, what had marked her out in such a way, but the older ones could sometimes see things she couldn't. She still hated the association, 'Adam's girl', like he'd branded her or something. In a way he probably had.

"Oh yes. You match right down to your soul. Has he been rifling through your record collection yet?

“Not yet.” Adam said.

“It’s mostly his old stuff anyway. No offence, but I’m not as into Bob Dylan as you are.”

“Heathen.”

“So? Have the two of you made up yet?” Eve asked, direct as always.

“Evie, I don’t want to dredge up the past.” Ada said, the warm happy feeling that the blood and her comforting touch had brought dispersed like smoke.

“But it’s so easy. You just say, ‘I’m sorry my self-destructive tendencies led me to bite you and turn you without your consent.’ And then you say ‘That’s alright Adam, we all do stupid things sometimes. I’m sorry I nearly got you found out and ran away and refused to talk to you for forty years.’ And then you have a cuddle and put it behind you.” Eve said gently, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. Suddenly the room felt as though it was too small, too hot even though it had been rainy and miserable all week.

“You know what, I really really don’t want to talk about it right now.” She got up quickly, triggering a cloud of dust in her wake, and stalked out of the room.

“Ada, sweetheart. Where are you going?”

“I’m... going out for a bit. I need some air.” she said and hurried downstairs and out into the night.

 

* * *

London 1967

 

Eve nudged the bedroom door open, after leading them up to the top floor. It was pretty tiny, no more than an attic really, just another place to house his centuries-old collection of clutter. But somewhere underneath all the papers and boxes of junk and mouldering watercolours there was a bed and a wardrobe (currently full but easily cleared out) and everything a child might need for a bedroom including an ancient patchwork quilt in a range of faded floral prints and a few battered volumes of the Chronicles of Narnia on the bedside table. In a few short hours Eve had managed to clear a liveable space out of the chaos and guided them round acting extremely proud of herself.

“Right so it’s still a bit of a mess in here but we can clear it out in the morning. The bathroom’s next door. Um…there’s the bed. You don’t have asthma do you? It’s a bit dusty.”

“No” Ada replied. She had hardly said anything since they got home. Adam assumed she was still a little overwhelmed by what had occurred that evening.

“Good. There’s a lamp. Very important. And I found some books you might like, if you get bored.”

“Where did you find all this stuff?” Adam asked suspiciously.

“In the linen cupboard.”

“I have a linen cupboard?”

“Yes, and don’t you remember this quilt? Jane made it for us as a wedding present.”

“Oh yeah, of course.” He acknowledged, silently pleading with her not to carry on that little tangent. ‘Jane Austen, yes that Jane Austen was at our third wedding a hundred years ago, oh and yes she’s one of us and she’s still alive, and writing crime thrillers no less under a false name.’ He couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t thought any of this through, which was strange because he thought everything though. He never invited people to stay, and never made snap decisions if he could help it. Why then had he been so worked up over taking this child in? If Eve hadn’t been there to help him he may very well have only had an old sofa to offer her. But maybe it wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. Maybe he had been hoping for something like this to happen since he discovered what Ada’s home-life was like and tonight had just sped up those plans a little bit. Wasn’t he planning on re-modelling his entire house purely to make her more comfortable? Who on earth did that for their student? How many other things had he forgotten to consider? Humans had needs after all. Adam’s needs could be reduced purely to blood and darkness and not much else and he’d continue into eternity. A boring and lonely eternity but an eternity nonetheless. But humans needed all sorts of things, things that he’d long since forgotten about like stoves and dustpans and a varied diet. They needed light and exercise and medicine and perhaps most importantly other humans. The more he thought about it, the more complicated it sounded, and he wondered how he had ever coped before he had been turned.

“Right well, um I’ll just go and get ready for bed, yeah, back in a sec.” Ada said awkwardly, pulling a pair of threadbare grey flannel pyjamas that would have looked more at home on an old man than a little girl, a plastic comb with more than a few teeth missing and a few other toiletries and disappeared into the bathroom across the landing.

“Oh fuck, what have I done?” Adam gasped, once the girl was safely out of earshot, his voice kept to a panicked whisper.

“Oh? Has it only just hit you what a colossally stupid idea this is?” Eve snapped. “She would be safer in a tank full of sharks than she is here.”

“I didn’t think this through at all, what have I done?”

“Adam. Stay calm.”

“What are we going to do? It’s freezing in here, what if she dies. What are we going to do when she realises we don’t eat? It’s only been three hours and I’m already starving, what’s it going to be like when her scent’s all over the house? What if one of the others come around…and just fucking eats her?” Adam was hyperventilating now. “Oh my god, I can’t breathe.”

“You don’t need to breathe.”

“And what the hell were all those pills you gave her?”

“Those new contraceptives. They weren’t easy to get on the quick either, I had to go all the way to the hospital.”

“Contraceptives? She’s thirteen, what the hell do you think she’ll be getting up to?”

“Taking them every day delays the bleeding?” she explained, as though he was an idiot.

“What?”

“The bleeding Adam! Christ, I know it’s been a while since you’ve lived with a human girl but you can’t seriously have forgotten.” His eyes widened as the realisation hit him.

“Oh! Oh fuck I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“No. You never think when you’re like this!”

“Like what?”

“Infatuated! No, not in that way.” She cut him off as he was about to protest. “I know she’s no Alma or Christina, or even an Augusta, but I’d be lying if I said you weren’t behaving in a similar way.” Was he? Adam had fallen into far too many doomed relationships over the course of his long life varying from deep inseparable friendships turned sour to turbulent love affairs ending in disaster. The truth was that no matter how fervently he loved a human he could never escape the fact that he was their natural predator. Some primeval instinct made them repelled by his presence even if they didn’t fully understand why, and that distrust would slowly taint everything and most of the time they would reject him and the rest of the time they would grow old and die which was a lot worse. He could see why the others wouldn’t even bother getting involved with all that. Even Eve who loved the company of humans on a superficial level, would never dream of actually befriending one. If you saw one you liked, you turned them that was the way things went. But Adam could never bring himself to inflict such a thing on another person, least of all on someone he loved.

 

“I know this is your house and your business and I know we have a lot of things we need to sort out before we can definitively become an ‘us’ again…”

“What? Are you saying you don’t want her here?”

“I’m not saying that. Of course she’s welcome here, I just would have preferred it if you’d discussed it with me first.”

“It’s only for a little while.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Just put her to bed, and then you need to feed, you haven’t had anything since yesterday.” Eve said with a resigned sigh. “You need to keep it together. This is going to be a lot of work and I know you’re good at a lot of things, but you can’t even take care of a houseplant, let alone a living person.”

“Well that’s only because there’s no natural light in this house. The outdoor plants are doing really well, the weeds are anyway.” Adam said weakly after her as she went downstairs.

 

* * *

 

 

"You know I can put myself to bed, right?" Ada said when she came back in, as Adam hovered by the door. 

"I'm sorry."

"Did you know only one of your taps work?" she got under the covers, shivering a little at the cold. He could have kicked himself, it was February and there was no heating in the house.

"You didn’t drink it did you, it’s from my rainwater tank. I think there might be a rat in it." Adam worried

"No it smelled pretty disgusting so I used it to flush the toilet."

"How did you work that out?"

"This isn’t the first time I’ve lived with the water cut off." Ada grinned "Why do you live like this anyway? Is it an environmental protest? All that self sufficiency rubbish."

“I just haven't really got round to fixing it yet.” Adam said. If he was going to tell her, he was going to do it gently. Get her used to the little things first, then maybe move on to the blood drinking. "I suppose you’re too old for a bedtime story." he said, hesitantly sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Yeah probably, but I think I’d like one anyway." he settled down to tell his tale.

"Well a long time ago there was a man who was considered the greatest musician who ever lived, although that was debatable and I’m not really sure how they came to that conclusion. He played in packed theatres and in lavish palaces, he travelled the world and flirted with princesses and played cards with kings. But as well as his incredible technical ability, his cadaverous appearance led to myths of all sorts. He was tall and thin, had a long nose, a pale and long-drawn face with hollow cheeks, thin lips that seemed to curl into a sardonic smile, and piercing eyes like flaming coals. The rumours started flying that, like Dr Faustus, he had made a deal with the devil and had exchanged his soul for fame and musical talent. But it had not been his soul the demon was after, and soon the musician discovered that his new abilities came at a terrible price. A price he was not prepared to pay, but it was too late and he knew that he would be cursed forever."

"Adam? Is this based on Niccolo Paganini?" Ada asked.

"Fuck, have you heard it already?"

"Yeah, sorry. But not this version. I didn’t mind hearing it again."

"I was trying to make it spooky for you. I know you like all that stuff."

"Adam, why are you telling me all this?" he was about to answer that the story was really about him, but he lost his nerve.

"Because I have some of his Caprices somewhere and I thought it might be fun if I played them for you tomorrow."

"Really?"

"Yes, now go to sleep. We're got a lot of work to do tomorrow."

 

 

* * *

 

 Bracknell 1975

 

The bedroom was a tasteless mess of satins, velvets, and flock wallpaper all in ivory with gold trim. It was such a beautiful old house but whoever had decorated it should have been fired. It had one of those wardrobes that almost took up the whole wall with mirrored doors and as Ada looked into the glass only to see an empty room she felt she would never get used to not having a reflection. She knew that if she could see herself, it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. Half starved, unwashed, and practically homeless, if she looked as bad as she felt then it was no wonder people who saw her in the street looked so alarmed.

There was a dressing table in the corner crowded with makeup, red nail varnish and perfume, with a residue of cocaine mingling with the spilled face powder on its mirrored surface. The wardrobe was filled with women’s clothes, some of it was pretty expensive looking. Not that she knew much about fashion, she hadn’t even thought about it since she had been turned and before then the closest she ever came was shoplifting at the Biba store with a girl named Kimberly Saxton.

Ada wasn’t aware of James’ current living situation but it looked a hell of a lot like he had a wife or a girlfriend living with him and she felt apprehensive about intruding into someone’s personal sanctuary. But the sheets on the bed smelled clean and there was a thin layer of dust on everything that had been undisturbed for several weeks, so whoever’s room this was had not been there for some time. She wondered who this mysterious woman might have been. Was she still in the picture or had James kept her room exactly the same for years like some sort of obsessed stalker? She doubted it, he didn’t exactly strike her as the unrequited love type. If anything he was a complete rat.

The bathroom was spectacular with an antique bathtub with clawed bronze feet and elaborate brass faucets. Although she was practically falling asleep on her feet, she could not remember the last time she had been able to have a proper bath, for the last year her only option had been the dingy shower in the staff locker room at the hospital. So she found herself pulling down the blinds and sealing off the gaps with an old towel to block out the rapidly approaching sunrise and turning on the taps before sinking into the steamy water. It was heaven, the mixture of the blood and the hot water made her feel almost normal again, her hands were warm and her long dark hair was perfectly conditioned and smelled of roses. She could already feel the changing weather front approaching outside as raindrops hit the window in their frantic uneven rhythm and breathed a sigh of contentment as the sound lulled her to sleep.

-

She awoke disorientated to the sound of raised voices and warm hands dragging her head out of the cold water. To her horror she realised had fallen asleep in the bathtub, the water had gone cold and the bubbles had long since disappeared. Cracking an eye open she could see it was already dark outside, thank goodness. Fully awake she became aware that it had not been James who had lifted her out of the water, but a young woman. There was someone else in the house. She could smell her before she even opened her eyes, and it was definitely a woman, the delicate scent of face cream, shampoo and Chanel No19 the same as the bottle on the dressing table. Beneath it all, beneath the iris and the vetivers and that weird dead animal smell lay the much more intoxicating scent of blood. Ada had never menstruated before. Eve had somehow managed to put her on a contraceptive pill before she had even started, knowing that taking it constantly would delay the natural rhythm of her body. She hadn’t understood the importance of it back then, but the thought of five days of living with that smell made her body tense, she could barely control herself as it was. Ada felt her fingers touch her throat burning hot after the cold of the water, felt her fear through her skin, and heard the rapid beating of her heart as she came closer. Her blood. Fuck, the room was too small for her to cope with this. If she hadn’t fed so well the night before she might have easily dragged her beneath the cold water and torn her flesh apart like a shark in a feeding frenzy.

“No, Cassandra! Stop. Don’t go in there!” the door had been flung open and James followed her in, clearly functioning enough to realise that they were in some exceptionally bad shit. The woman, Cassandra, paused evidently shocked at his reaction and let go of her and turned to face the man in the doorway, momentarily slipping under the water again. Ada suddenly became acutely aware of her own nakedness as she sank lower into the tub, trying to hide herself and looked around for a towel.

 “Jim, is…is she dead?” she heard the woman say in a terrified whisper. Of course she would think that, she was ice cold, and pale, and motionless, and not breathing, and most importantly underwater for a good twelve hours. She met James’ eyes and he looked just as terrified as she was.

“What? No!”

“There is a drowned girl in here. What did you do? What did you give her?”

“She’s fine, she’s just… sleeping.” Ada rolled her eyes, the guy was obviously not great under pressure.

“We need to call an ambulance, she’s not breathing.” Cassandra shouted.

“You really shouldn’t be touching her.” They were now faced with several choices. She could either continue to play dead and escape the house at the first opportunity, which would probably involve the police and an ambulance being called, and much as she wanted to get out of there and save her own skin she didn’t want to knowingly send a dying man to prison. The second option was to kill the girl. Easily done, but would probably result in the same outcome, and she didn’t want any more blood on her hands. She could reveal what she was, but she had no idea what the reaction would be the worst would probably also result in option two. Which left her with only one alternative.

“It’s alright. I’m awake, I’m up.” Ada mumbled groggily, hoping that the woman didn’t notice her reflection in the bathroom mirror behind them, or absence thereof. She cracked an eye open and when the searing brightness subsided she was met with the kind of willowy blonde that only existed on movie screens and the cover of Italian Vogue. She didn’t want to impose her will on her, she wasn’t even sure if she could manage it, but she had a lot of blood inside her which would help things, the more you fed the more powerful you became, in her desperation it was worth a try and better than killing an innocent person simply because they had seen too much. She took Cassandra’s hand in her own and concentrated. Where her body was solid and predictable in its functions, her mind was strange and constantly shifting, thoughts flowing like water, impossible to grasp. But if she surrounded the whole mind with her own, then it could almost be controlled.

“Cassandra. Look at me.” That did the trick, the fear she felt had drifted away as their eyes locked and their skin touched. It always helped if you knew the person’s name for some reason, and if you made eye contact, it made the bond stronger. The woman was now in a highly suggestable state. “Do you trust me? Will you let me in?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t see me. You’re going to leave this room and shut the door, and then you’re going to forget everything you’ve seen here.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“Good.” Ada said, and let go of her hand. Taking advantage of the brief respite when the two humans had left, she quickly emptied the bath, dried herself and put on a fluffy white bath robe she found in the airing cupboard, her clothes were so ragged and dirty she couldn’t face putting them back on. She was more than prepared to hide in there until Cassandra left, but jumped when the door opened again, not five minutes later. Had she done it wrong? Had it worn off already?

“Oh so this is what you were all shifty about.” Cassandra said angrily. “Seriously, it’s been three weeks and you’ve already got another girl in here. How old is this one? Fifteen? Fourteen? You know what, it’s not my problem anymore, I don’t care.”

“Sweetheart, it’s not like that.”

“That’s my robe.”

“Sorry, my clothes were dirty.” Ada apologised warily, had it really worked? She needed to be sure.

“Jesus Christ! Are you feeling ok? What’s wrong with your eyes?” Cassandra said. Of course, her eyes must be glowing red by now. But she sounded far from worried anymore, perhaps even a little curious. Still she didn’t want to risk it.

“Oh I…er got shampoo in my eyes. It’s a bad idea, I wouldn’t recommend it.” Ada explained and held out a hand in greeting and Cassandra, looking slightly baffled but shook it awkwardly. “I’m Ada, it’s good to finally meet you.”

“Cassandra, it’s nice to meet you too.” By now the, model, or actress, or whoever she was seemed to have forgotten she had even seen a dead girl in her bathtub, and instead she was completely charmed by the strange creature in her bathroom. It was a mistake though, she was already drained from the first attempt and now it felt as though all her energy had been used up. Her batteries were well and truly flat, and the smell of blood was everywhere.

“Um…Cass, this is Ada Young, Adam Drese’s daughter.” James explained. “I invited her here to discuss the record label and to get her on board. And well you know how it is, you stay up all night talking, making plans. I didn’t realise you were coming back today.”

“Drese? The guy who beat you up?” Cassandra said.

“…Yeah, him.”

“Wait, I remember you now. You were that girl who wrote that amazing song. What was it called?...Lilith’s Children, right?” the woman said, as recognition dawned on her. Ada sighed, she had been trying to edge her way out of the room before she did something stupid, but the woman seemed determined to keep talking to her.

“Oh yeah, that was me. Well, me and Adam. It was more of a collaboration sort of thing.”           

“It’s amazing, everyone was going crazy for it.”

“Really? I really didn’t think anyone had heard it.”

“Oh well they play your stuff all the time at Rodney’s and all those places, they just can’t get enough of all those British invasion artists, don’t they James?”

“Um..yeah.” James mumbled.

 “And I think it’s just fantastic. So different from anything out there. But if you’re seriously looking for a record label, you could do a lot better. Maybe it would have been a good idea a few years ago when he had it together. But, well, you’ll be lucky if it happens at all at this rate.” James looked as though he was about to throttle her.

“Well, nothing’s decided yet.” Ada said. “So, I should just get out of your way, I’m sorry, again, about the robe.” She got up. If she moved fast enough she could leave the room before the woman looked in the mirror. If she was fast enough she could find somewhere far enough away where she couldn’t smell the blood.

“James, do you have any more?” she said, pulling him into the hallway before an argument could start.

“What?”

“Do you have any more? I’m hungry.” She repeated slowly, struggling to resist the urge to breathe and the urge to charge back into the bedroom and rip Cassandra’s throat out. “I’m hungry, and I want her.”

“Oh shit! Right, I’ll deal with her, just wait for me downstairs.” She crept downstairs and was soon followed by the sound of more shouting.

_“How old is she?”_

_“Twenty two, I think. Around that age.”_

_“Bullshit!”_

_“It’s true.”_

_“So what is she to you?”_

_“It’s not like that Cass. I’m not like that. And even if it was, I don’t see how it’s any of your business anymore.”_

_“Well, what is it then?”_

_“She’s just staying here for a bit. Like I said.”_

_“She looked strung out up there. Jim, one of these days you’re going to get arrested. Or worse. And I don’t like the idea of you getting involved with that Drese guy again. Do you remember what he did to you last time, and that was just his tapes what’s he going to do when he finds out you’re messing around with his kid?”_

_“I know what I’m doing, Cass. Now if you’re quite finished I’d like you to take your stuff and get out.”_

She heard the sound of the front door slamming and James stomped down the stairs.

“Right let’s get out of here.” He said looking slightly spooked.

She followed him down the stairs and out into the darkness of the garden, past a parade of vintage cars, some worth millions some merely interesting to look at, all of them black. Past the fragrant lavender bushes and nicotiana plants that still hummed with moths well after sunset.

“What was that back there, it looked like you hypnotised her or something.” James asked.

“I did.” Ada confessed. “I hope it holds, I’m not very good at it, and the last I need is her remembering what she saw.”

“That’s amazing. I wish I was able do that to her when she’s in a mood.”

“I wish I could use it to make you not be a damn misogynist, but I don’t think anyone’s that powerful.”

He led her through the garden and into a small guest cottage that once they were inside revealed a hidden treasure trove of instruments and recording equipment. A ladder led up to a small loft mezzanine which held an unmade bed and a fair amount of mess, cold half-finished cups of tea littered every available surface next to overflowing ashtrays and blackened tinfoil that smelled like death.

“Ah the home studio. This looks awfully familiar.” Ada exclaimed, admiring the rows and rows of guitars. James opened a small refrigerator in the kitchenette in the corner which was filled with blood packs stacked on top of each other along with a single bottle of milk.

“Do you like it? After I saw the one at your place I decided I had to have one. I mean the amount of time I spend working down here it practically pays for itself.”

“Do you sleep here?” Ada asked.

“Yeah, seems silly with such a big house next door doesn’t it?” James shrugged “To be honest Cassandra always preferred her privacy. We never really shared a bed all that much. Not for sleeping anyway. Do you still use Adam’s studio?”

“Um no, not really. The equipment at ours got shipped to Detroit years ago so…” and if she was honest she didn’t like going down there anymore. The whole place was practically a crime scene mapped out in bloodstains on the soundproofed walls that no amount of bleach could clean off. “The workshop still comes in handy though. I’ve been restoring an old mandolin he left behind. Well I say mandolin it was just the body really, the whole neck had been snapped off.”

“Still doing your little projects.”

“It’s got to be at least three hundred years old, it would be a shame to throw it away.” Ada sighed. It gave her something to do when night shifts drifted into long sleepless mornings, but she wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Adam was the real craftsman where those things were concerned, his tinkering could produce wonders.

“So he’s in Detroit then?” James asked.

“Yeah, he sent me a postcard with his address and phone number. He wanted me to go with him but…. I probably should have gone in retrospect, life would be a lot easier.” There had been a time when she had believed anything was better than living with Adam, their black moods, all blaring rows and stony silences and the sick omnipresent fear of leaving him alone in the house. But no matter how dysfunctional their relationship was, it was still better than being alone. 

“Maybe. But I get it. You were angry at him right?”

“You know, I really don’t want to talk about it. Speaking of which what happened with Miss World out there? Was it the tumour or…?”

“Oh no, she doesn’t know anything.” James confessed “Actually you’re the first person I’ve told about that. No she left me because of the drugs…and because I kept cheating on her while I was on tour.”

“Yeah, that’ll do it.”

“Hey, she met me in LA. She knew what she was getting into.”

“You’re such an arsehole. Why am I helping you again?”

“Because you like me really.” James laughed, pouring the blood into one of the last clean coffee mugs, that had a painting of Peter Rabbit on it, and handed it to her “And because I feed you.”

“Not just a pretty face. Alright give us your bonce, let me have a look at how that tumour is doing.” He leaned forward and she brushed her fingers along his scalp. Compared to her own hands, his skin felt as though it was burning. His heart beat erratically, despite his confident appearance she realised how truly nervous he was, there were still drugs and alcohol in his system, and the tumour had barely changed at all.

“Any change?”

“Hmm it's a little smaller but not by much. Maybe I didn't give you enough. Maybe you need something more regular.”

“You would do that?”

“Well this place isn’t so bad. Hot water, electric lights, a recording studio in the garden, and you know, not derelict. That’s always a plus.”

“Is that all?”

“I suppose I’ve developed a taste for the high life.” Ada laughed, and swallowed the contents of the cup in one gulp.


	9. Intruder

**Chapter Nine - Intruder**

**Nevada - 1975**

_….Rumours have always circulated around James Green, the psychedelic hit-maker turned Rock and Roll superstar lead guitarist of Blue Equinox, but this summer they have spread like a plague as their planned world tour approaches. Rumours that he had stolen a lot of his early material from a much lesser known but highly acclaimed artist named Adam Drese, a genius so reclusive that some people doubt he even exists at all. Rumours that he indulges in Satanism, heroin, sado-masochism and a number of other things too nasty to repeat. That he’s dying of a mysterious illness. That he has been cursed by a shaman. That his girlfriend of five years the Swedish-American model and starlet Cassandra Jorgensen has left him. That he has been keeping a teenage girl locked in his house in the country. The list goes on and on although nothing has been been confirmed. But in the midst of all this press speculation, a spokesperson for Blue Equinox at Atlantic Records confirmed that the world tour will be going ahead as planned…._

Ava set down her copy of Rolling Stone where the latest article on the band had made the front cover, including a two page photo spread and a rare interview with the lead singer, and lay back pensively against the colourful collection of pillows. Normally she would just skim read things when she was bored, but the name caught her eye and made her go back and re-read it.

James Green knew Adam? It probably shouldn’t have surprised her, Adam’s hand could be heard in a number of things or at least his influence. But Blue Equinox really didn’t seem like his style at all. In fact that kind music was everything he claimed to hate. ‘Overblown soulless stadium sludge that gets wildly popular for some reason’ she could almost hear him complain, if his feud with Ambroise Thomas was anything to go by. It was a good thing Adam was so beautiful because he could be such a judgemental snob sometimes. Just a constant downer.

Perhaps Blue Equinox were worth a listen, she thought to herself. She had heard a couple of their songs on the radio as she drove from town to town through deserts, mountains, and forests, leaving a string of mysterious accidents and animal attacks in her wake.

“What do you think?” she asked the mound of blankets next to her that covered what was left of her companion for the night.

There was no response.

“Oh…right. Sorry.”

She got out of bed and began to look through Mr Tall Dark and Deceased’s records, he looked like the type who would listen to that sort of stuff judging by his tattoos. Sure enough she pulled out a copy of their first album, self-titled, the sleeve printed in a deep blue with a circular constellation map with each of the mythical representations of the zodiac beautifully illustrated in white. The design was repeated again on the vinyl itself as a picture disc. In a way it was really quite beautiful, definitely not what she had been expecting and as she listened to it became obvious that Adam had written the vast majority of it. This was no influence this was an entirely original entity all by itself. But had it been given as a gift to a friend? Adam did that sometimes, when he didn’t want to be found out or when he collaborated with people he refused to take any credit. That must have been it, she had never heard of anyone managing to plagiarise Adam’s music and live to tell the tale. A strange way to draw the line but it was the principle of the thing she supposed. She would have to pay this James Green person a visit it seemed.

 

 

She searched the house for cash, drugs or anything valuable. It hadn’t been a good idea to feed off the guy in his own house, normally she dragged them out into the woods. In fact she hadn’t planned on hurting him at all, but he had been so handsome and such a good kisser that she just couldn’t help herself and before she knew it he had started going into shock. She sighed, why did they always have to die on her these days? It had been decades since someone came back. Adam had said it was something to do with synthesised chemicals and that they needed to be careful about who they fed on, all those new pharmaceuticals and frankenfoods they kept inventing, all the pollution and nuclear fallout. Ava didn’t really know anything about that. She was still getting used to germ theory. She had come from a time where if you got hurt you just had to cut your leg off and hope for the best.

She decided the best thing to do would be to torch the house. After searching the room she found a roll of banknotes and an eightball of coke and a pack of cigarettes in the bedside drawer. The money was enough to keep her in gas and hotels for a while, and the rest could be traded or used to lure some poor bastard into the back of her Vanagon. She took the record as well as an afterthought, and the pillows that didn’t have blood on them and a few items from the wardrobe. Her clothes were getting shabby, maybe she could start feeding on girls again and salvaging anything that looked cool. It was so hard to find clothes stores that were open after six and most of the time she had to resort to ordering from Sears and other catalogues full of polyester nightmares, disgusting.

 

 

The house successfully ablaze she drove off into the night. She had been drifting around the United States since the forties when all the wartime austerity in Europe had become too depressing. Usually wars were wonderful times for her, a harvest time where no one would notice if she took out an entire family, or even a village. But the last two big ones had just been overkill, even for her, as people came up with new and ingenious ways of killing each other. She had never been to America before but had grown weary of the old world and its desolation and the petty rivalries of her other siblings and had a craving for opportunity and greener pastures. A few years ago she had stolen the Volkswagen camper from some guy at a music festival allowing her a place to sleep even when money was tight. She had liked the mint green colour of it and the brightly coloured beaded curtains inside.

 

She never stayed in one place for very long, never more than a few months, and so she was always hungry. But this was the natural way for her to exist, no attachments and no responsibilities. There had been jobs in nightclubs, tending bar, waitressing, occasionally dancing, there had been a few short lived modelling jobs too but whatever allure she had in the flesh didn’t translate well to film. She ran into others occasionally. This place seemed to have originally been free of their kind but they had blown in from Europe and infected it like measles and cholera. No one important, no one of any true lineage or bonds to the creator, just strays, newborns, and exiles. Some were alone, others hung around in gangs trying to give some illusion of power. But she could tear them apart with her little finger if she wanted to, and they knew it. Some asked to follow her, offering her their fealty, she had no interest in such things of course but tolerated their curiosity. It wasn’t every day they got to meet a child of Lilith even if she was only the youngest. The vast majority however were smart enough to stay away.

 

It wasn’t until she had reached Memphis that she had caught Adam’s scent. It was old and he would have been long gone by then, but it lingered as did the music that was still carried on the airwaves. There were traces of him all over the South she discovered, Jackson, Nashville, New Orleans. Of course he would go where the music was. She had thought about tracking him down, but after last time, and without Eve around, he’d probably go after her with a shotgun or lock her in a trunk an throw her in the ocean again. He wouldn’t kill her of course, Adam wasn’t like that, he didn’t even like killing humans, but there would definitely be violence. She was still curious though, his stuff had been getting rather good lately. And perhaps this Green fellow could be worth a laugh or two.

 

* * *

 

 

**London 1967**

 

Ada woke up from her nightmare into total darkness and for a moment had a hard time working out what had been real and what had been the dream. There had been something in the room with her, something creeping and dark that moved all around her from under the bed, up the walls and suspended from the ceiling and it had stuck to everything like tar. She tried to remember the details of it, but it was it was already forgotten leaving nothing but a residual trace of terror.

It dawned on her that she wasn’t at home anymore, she was in Adam’s attic, that was why it was so much darker then she was used to but after groping around to find the bedside lamp the room didn’t seem quite as scary. She looked at her watch. It was almost noon. Without her alarm clock and with no natural light in the room she must have just carried on sleeping. It couldn’t have been a very restful sleep. If anything she felt drained, emotionally and physically. It had been one hell of week, thank God it was Saturday because there was no way she could face going to school after last night. She didn’t think she could feel homesick for an empty house, but she missed her books and her toys even though she hadn’t played with them in over a year. The Pelham Puppets that hung up in a row from the shelf. The Sasha doll her mother had bought her that Christmas in a rare moment of attentiveness, she hadn’t had the heart to tell her that she was getting a bit old for dolls because it had the same black hair, brown eyes and olive skin as she did and her mum had sewn a miniature version of her red duffle coat out of felt. She should had brought it with her, she thought with a twinge of regret, but she had been too embarrassed.

The attic room was cluttered and unwelcoming, the piles of junk casting long and strange shadows, cardboard boxes filled with wires, papers, old clothes that smelled of damp and rot. Some of them looked like they might have been quite opulent at one time, moth-eaten Edwardian tea dresses and ball gowns, silk waistcoats, a squashed and dusty top hat. There were paintings too, stacked up against the far wall, landscapes mostly, or of women in flowy dresses. The last one, a yellowed and flaking oil painting covered with a linen sheet was a portrait of a young man. His hair may have been longer, and he may have had a pointy beard like King Charles I but it was definitely Adam, holding a lute and wearing an elaborate jacket with large sleeves and lace around the collar, what was is called, a doublet? The likeness was uncanny. What kind of Dorian Grey fuckery had she got herself into? No. Adam was one of those faded aristocratic types, he probably came from an old family and this was just a portrait of an ancestor. Perhaps all that was left of a crumbling mansion somewhere. A remnant of a better time.

Covering the painting back up, she padded downstairs. There was no one around so she made her way back up to the first floor and tapped on the bedroom door, or what she assumed was Adam’s bedroom, there were a lot of locked doors on this floor.

“Adam?” she whispered.

Nothing. 

“Eve?” she said a little louder, knocking again.

Still nothing.

Perhaps they had gone out while she was still sleeping. Or perhaps Eve shared Adam’s habit of sleeping through the day and they were both zonked out in there. She had phoned the police station again, but there was no news so there was nothing left to do except knock around the house. She was curious to look through the books in the library but the door had been locked. She thought about going outside, but realised she didn’t have a key to get back in, and if Adam and Eve woke up while she was out they might get worried. In the end she spent the afternoon eating corn flakes out of the box and watching television in the living room. It had been a while, they had had to pawn their set a few months ago. The rugby was on all afternoon, and Grandstand, as someone who didn't care much for sport it was slightly less interesting than watching paint dry so she fetched the books in her room and made a start on Prince Caspian until Juke Box Jury came on. The new releases all seemed pretty average that week, until they played the new Beatles single and the remainder of Adam's money burned a hole in her pocket and the prospect of waiting until Monday to get it made her bristle with impatience. She was a fan, who the hell wasn't, she had the biggest crush on George Harrison. She had scrimped and saved to by their last album, and listened to Tomorrow Never Knows on repeat for hours trying to figure out how they managed to get the sound like that. It was early evening when Adam finally emerged from upstairs, barefoot and rumpled but thankfully fully dressed. He blinked at her sleepily as if he had forgotten he had invited her to stay last night, then looked at the flickering black and white screen of the television as though he had forgotten he owned one.

“What on earth are you watching?” he said finally.

“Doctor Who.”

“Doctor what?”

“I missed the beginning, but I think the cybermen are the ones killing people on the moonbase.”

“Sounds ridiculous.” He sniffed but sat down next to her on the couch and began to watch with her.

“It’s not the best. I don’t like this new doctor as much as the old one.” Ada commented when the programme ended “Do you think we’ll ever get to the moon?”

“I don’t know. It’s pretty dangerous out there in space. Lots of solar radiation. It would be a tremendous undertaking.”

“I think we can. Do you think it’ll be the Russians or the Americans?” she carried on.

“I think national boundaries become meaningless once you leave the planet.” Adam frowned. “Are you hungry?” she nodded “Then how about we get some dinner and then we can catch up on your lessons.”

“Lessons? But its night time, and I’m in the middle of a domestic crisis.”

“All the more reason to do it, it’ll take your mind off things.”

As she was putting her coat and shoes on Eve came gliding down the stairs.

“Oh you’re already up! I hope you weren’t too bored on your own down here.”

“I’m fine thanks.” Ada said, a little embarrassed at the sight of her long white legs under what looked like one of Adam’s shirts. “Um, we were going to go out for chips, do you want anything?”

“No. Nothing for me thank you.” Eve smiled. “Make sure he doesn’t keep you up too late. Or you’ll become as nocturnal as he is.” She teased as Adam appeared in the hallway. After the dream and the portrait, Ada didn’t find the joke very funny.

The streets of Camden were cold and crisp that evening and the few people who were out seemed like they were in a hurry to get home. Adam cut a strange silhouette out in the real world, tall and angular, his long hair and greatcoat blowing in the wind, he looked like something out of a Bronte novel.

They eventually found a chip shop that didn’t look like it had a rat infestation. Once again Adam let her order whatever she wanted without getting anything for himself and once again he paid in cash from the roll of banknotes in his pocket. She glanced at her reflection in the glass counter and cringed, she looked worn out and her hair was a mess and she had the strangest feeling that something wasn’t right but she couldn’t put her finger on it. The woman serving them handed over her order, wrapped up in soggy newspaper and Adam reached over to take it. She looked at the glass again. That was it!

Adam didn’t have a reflection!

“Do you want anything to drink?” Adam asked, making her jump out of her skin like she had been caught.

“Um…cream soda?” she answered saying the first thing that popped in her head.

“We’re out of cream soda, we’ve only got lemonade.” The woman said irritably as though she had asked for the moon.

“Okay.”

On the way home, she glanced at every shop window and in every single one of them she was alone in the street. What the actual hell was that all about? How had she never noticed this before? There were no mirrors in Adam’s house either. Out of all the books she’d read only one creature didn’t have a reflection. She was beginning to lag behind and had to run to keep up. But as she turned the corner she almost slammed into Adam back as he stopped dead, frozen in place.

There in the shadows of the small side street was another man, old and filthy, he looked like one of the homeless men that drank all night in the park and hassled women on the underground.

“Nice weather we’re having, ain’t it?” the man said, it was clear but freezing cold. “Look at that moon.”

“Yes.” Adam replied warily.

“Adam is it? The musician. Last time I saw you bout these parts they was still hanging people in the street.” The man laughed wheezily and looked at the food wrapped in newspaper under his arm then straight at her as she peered out from behind Adam’s back. “Getting dinner?”

“You’d better move along.” Adam warned.

“Come on now. We’re brothers, ain’t we? Ain’t you willing to share?”

“I belong to the house of Lilith, you belong to no one, and you have no relation to me. Now be on your way.”

“You Pre-industrials are so elitist. And shame on you, snatching a poor innocent child like that. I’m almost outraged. See you around mate.” The man…. no, _thing_ said, leering at her one last time and disappearing into the shadows almost as quickly as he had arrived. She was about to ask Adam what the hell was going on but before she could even open her mouth he had grabbed her by the wrist and half led, half dragged her in the opposite direction they had come from.

“We have to get out of here. Be quick now.” He said in a hushed voice as they ran.

“Who was that?” Ada cried

“I’ll explain later, just hurry up.”

They rushed down street after street until she began to feel thoroughly lost then down into a deserted underground station, not even bothering to pay for tickets just jumping the turnstile bolting down the slippery steps and into the nearest available train carriage. She was hot and out of breath, but Adam didn’t even seem winded.

“That was good, you kept up well.” He said.

“Not the first time I’ve had to run away from something.” She said, grinning despite herself. She should be terrified, as everything fell into place, but it was so preposterous that it didn’t quite seem real. Perhaps she was still dreaming, and she was back at the house.

“Who was that? Back there?”

“Just a stray, but where there’s one there’s probably more and he might decide to follow us home and come back with reinforcements. So, we’re going to have to take a little detour.” Adam said, but that didn’t explain anything. She looked out the window opposite them, seeing only her reflection and the darkness of the tunnel they were travelling through.

 “You don’t have a reflection.” She said shakily.

“No.” Adam said, sounding almost as frightened as she was.

“And in the past two months I’ve never seen you eat, drink, use a bathroom or get up during daylight hours. And that man heavily implied you’ve been around for a least a hundred years.”

“Four hundred, actually.” He sighed. For a long moment Ada was too shocked to say anything. She should have screamed, she should have demanded more answers but what came out of her mouth next was most decidedly uncouth.

“Shit off!”

“Ada.”

“I’ve seen Dracula: Prince of Darkness, I know what all that stuff means.” She said as he got up at the next stop and she followed him out of the station.

“Aren’t you a little young to be watching those kinds of films?” he said finally, which was the last thing she expected.

“I ask a grown up to buy the ticket for me and sneak in when no one’s looking.”

“Is that how you get your cigarettes as well?” he caught her off guard again, he seemed to be trying very hard to change the subject, even though at this point it was entirely futile. “I can smell it a mile away. Do you know how bad for you those things are?”

 “Yes, But that seems fairly irrelevant given that you’re a fucking vampire.” She shouted, not caring if anyone heard them.

“That’s one way of putting it.” Adam said, giving up.

“Is Eve one too?”

“Yes.”

“You drink blood.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to drink my blood?”

“Jesus Ada, if I was going to feed off you don’t you think I would have done it by now. No, I don’t bite people anymore.” He explained.

“Why not?”

“Too much pollution, I get it from St Pancras hospital now. Ok, we haven’t been followed, I think we’ve lost him.” They stopped and Ada recognised where they were at last, but it all looked very different at night.

“Hampstead Heath? Aren’t parks a bit dangerous at night?” she said as they made their way to Parliament Hill and sat down to rest for a while. The lights of the city seemed so far away from them even though they were right in the middle of it.

“I’m the most dangerous thing here.” Adam said matter-of-factly and handed her the food he had been carrying. “You may was well eat here before it gets cold.”

“Oh. Thanks.” With all the chaos that had just happened she had forgotten how hungry she was. She tore open the paper and began to eat, the greasy concoction of fried plaice and vinegary chips warming her lap and her stomach in the cold February air.

“What’s a stray?” she asked.

“Someone without a family. They’re not very powerful so they tend to go round in gangs, safety in numbers and all that. They’re not that much stronger than humans but when you get a lot of them together they can be dangerous.”

“And families are more powerful.”

“Yes. We can pass down abilities that other vampires don’t have.”

“Like what?”

“Eve can read things by touching them. It’s like she can see everything that it’s made of and everything that’s happened to it.” Suddenly her first meeting with Eve all made sense.

“Is that how she knew all that stuff about me? Fuck I should have known. It was like she was inside my head.”

“I’m really sorry about that.”

“That’s not nice, that’s private.”

“I know, I know, I’ve asked her not to do it again.”

“What about you? Can you do that?”

“A little, but I’m not very good.” Adam said motioning to the black leather gloves he was wearing. “But there is something else I can do.”

“What?”

“Well you know that I don’t sing.”

“Yeah you said you sound like a cat in a tumble dryer.”

“Well, that’s not the real reason. Stop me if you start to feel weird.”

She was about to ask for an explanation but then he started singing a few bars of Smoke Gets in your Eyes and she completely forgot what she was about to say and just sat there mesmerised as he sang. It was the most beautiful, soothing sound she had ever heard in her life. It was like nothing else existed, like the park and the bench and the frost had just melted away and it was just her and the voice. Adam stopped and she back to reality with a jolt. She looked down and realised they had company, dozens of stray cats had joined them to listen, a couple of hedgehogs, toads, rats, a lonely red fox, eyes glowing green in the dark.

“Jesus, did you lure the children away from Hamelin with that? Bloody Hell.”

“Shut up, it’s embarrassing.”

“Can you get them to clean your house like Snow White?”

“That’s the last time I share a close and personal secret with you.” Adam sighed and got up to leave. “The coast should be clear, lets go home.”

“Oh come on, do the thing again!” she got up to follow him, tossing the remains of her dinner in a nearby rubbish bin and ran down the hill.

“No.”

“Is it just the Platters or can you do it with any song?”

“Come on.”

“Wait, these are important questions.”

 

* * *

 

 

**Bracknell 1975**

 

The time at the old estate had been a rare moment of calm before what would prove to be an oncoming storm. After Cassandra had left, speeding away down the gravel driveway, Ada moved in to the main house while he carried on staying in the summer house/recording studio which Ada had dubbed the Guitar Cottage. Aside from when he needed to use the kitchen and the bathroom, which he only did during the day while she was sleeping, she pretty much had the whole sprawling house to herself.

They usually spent a few hours together in the evenings between when she got up at sunset and when he finally crawled off to bed sometime in the early hours of the morning. He wasn’t sure what she got up to while he slept, but he often found his books and old magazines lying around on coffee tables or on the floor, his records out of place, embers still burning in the fireplace. Small signs that she was real, and not a ghost. She stole his old clothes which were far too big for her, torn jeans and faded T-shirts, but most of the time she lounged around in Cassandra’s old dressing gown and not much else. It was incredibly distracting, especially since his libido was beginning to come back full force as he recovered. He had offered to buy her more clothes and she told him not to worry about it. He had had some things delivered from London anyway.

She took frequent baths, judging by all the hair in the drain, and she liked the water bed because it was heated. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of piano music drifting across from the main house, a sound so beautiful that sometimes he couldn’t be sure if it was real or if he was dreaming. Once he had peered through a crack in the curtains and realised he wasn’t the only one listening. There was man at the edge of the garden, or at least it looked like a man, just standing there staring up at his window, as though he knew he was in there. He was naked, almost glowing in the moonlight. His hair and beard were matted with dirt and it looked as though he was sniffing the air. James rushed to put his spectacles on but when looked back he was gone, like he had just disappeared into thin air. That was until he heard the tapping on his door a hideous slow scraping noise that didn’t stop until it was almost sunrise. He didn’t sleep that night.

He got the distinct impression that Ada didn’t care for him all that much, nor did she particularly trust him. He didn’t blame her. Given her past life, she probably didn’t have much reason to trust anyone, least of all some dick musician with a bad narcotic habit. He may have been a deeply selfish person and always had been, but at least he was open about it. Now however his recovery was entirely dependent on his ability to keep her happy and if it meant not dying of a horrible debilitating illness he was always eager to please. And in a weird way he liked providing for her. There would always be girls who were attracted to the money or the fame, perhaps even a few who just wanted to talk about the music if he got lucky, and he liked to impress them. It was more of a power thing than any sort of romantic inclination.

 

But there was something about Ada, a sort of sad doe-eyed vulnerability, despite being a superhuman killing machine that just drew him in and made him think that even if he didn’t need her to heal him he would still do anything she asked. Soon enough they both found themselves growing stronger. James’ health improved every day, and his nerve damage miraculously repaired in his hands and feet. He could play again. He didn’t get so many headaches that left him bedridden for days. Ada no longer had that rangy malnourished look about her, her skin lost a little of its ashen pallor and her long dark hair was no longer dry and unwashed. No longer a homeless waif she began to look strangely beautiful but eerily unchanged. He had never noticed it before but regular people had little differences about them over time. Their hair and fingernails grew, they got pimples and skin blemishes and freckled in the sun, their weight went up and down, but Ada was always the same. Like a wax figure, he thought.

 

Every evening she would visit him and, tap lightly on the French windows and feed off the O negative provided by his ‘doctor’ friend. It was difficult to watch sometimes but he couldn’t look away, like passing an accident on the motorway. At first she had gulped it down as though she were dying of thirst, which in a way she probably was, but as the weeks passed her grisly feeding sessions became more controlled. She needed to be careful, she said, bad things might happen if she drank too much. Then she would make a small cut in her arm or wrist and let him taste the dark fluid from her veins, slowly healing him of the cancer that intruded upon his body. He wasn’t sure if she noticed, but every time he drank from her he could almost feel her become a part of him, that it connected them. Not in any tangible way that he could identify, but as though he were a guitar string and she had adjusted him so they were perfectly in tune. That’s what it felt like during the blood rush, like everything was in harmony. They could stay like that for hours sometimes, not even needing to talk, just picking up the vibrations of the universe.

 

When they weren’t in the throes of haemaphoria together they spent their evenings in a companionable peace, writing songs and recording together in the studio, sometimes working well into the morning as sunlight glared between the blinds. They would take naps on the small bed on the mezzanine or on the worn out leather sofa then go straight back to work when they awoke. Once or twice he had tried to kiss her but she had quickly pulled away and he hadn’t pushed things.

 

He had a projector and a box full of old films from the thirties and some home movies of him and the band travelling on 16mm that they would watch. The Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin. She liked A Night at the Opera best. There were some porn films in there too, which she had pretended not to notice. There was a heated swimming pool in the back garden and she would happily float on her back for hours on clear nights and look at the stars or if there was a chill in the air she would retreat to the bottom, and stay still like a rock until the surface of the water became perfectly still.

 

Shortly after she moved in, after the naked man appeared in the garden he noted, she began to wander off into Swinley Forest where the tree line ended at the bottom of the garden with only a wooden fence as a barrier. Sometimes she wouldn’t come back until just before the first rays of sunlight began to creep over the horizon. He knew because he sat up waiting for her. She had wanted to see the Iron Age forts, she had explained, looking agitated and annoyed at him for asking. He had told her those were miles away and he could have driven her there if she had wanted to go that badly, but again she had told him not to worry about it and to not let any strangers in the house, which was probably the most worrying thing anyone had ever told him. So he had waited up for her in the main house that night, silently pacing in the kitchen. Eventually she had come home from one of her walks with blood on her hands all the way up to her elbows. It was dark, almost black. She jumped when she saw him then moved across to the kitchen sink and began washing the blood off.

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t a human.” She said, visibly shaken, eyes red and fangs still on display.

“What was it then?” he asked.

“Probably best if you don’t know, to be honest.”

“That isn’t encouraging. Was it one of your….people?”

“Yeah. Blood poisoning. Sometimes it causes brain damage. Most of the time they just go a bit senile, think they’re back in Versailles or something. But lately there’s been something going round that makes people violent, they go feral and they can’t control themselves.”

“This is a new thing?”

“Yeah, well there’s been a lot of new drugs out in the last few decades. Librium, Valium, LSD. My money’s on speed though, maybe steroids. Whatever it is, it’s killed a lot of vampires.”

“Oh.”

“He would have just kept on killing and killing if I hadn’t found him.” She met his eyes and must have seen how horrified he was feeling. “He was dying anyway, Jim. It couldn’t be helped. I just saved him a lot of pain.”

“But how?” she pulled out an old service revolver from somewhere under her shirt tails. “Jesus Ada, where did you even get that?”

“It was my granddad’s in world war one. Mk VI, .455 calibre, cordite loaded cartridges with a wooden bullet.”

“Wooden bullets?”

“Yeah, we used to use wooden stakes, but it turns out vampires are ridiculously difficult to kill. And pretty much impossible if you’re a human, unless you let them drink your dirty blood of course. Now, ferals are generally in a weakened state. They’re senses are dulled and they’re slower than usual, so a bullet can do the job. It’s got a limited range though, so you’ll need to get quite close and aim straight for the heart, because you won’t get a second shot.”

“Why are you telling me all this.”

“Well, it might save your life one day.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing when you go out? Hunting rabid vampires?”

“It’s not something I seek out, but if there’s one in your back garden you can’t exactly sit around and do nothing. I didn’t want to worry you, but he’s been lurking around in the woods for days now, and I’ve been trying to track him down.”

“That was him? The man from before!”

“Oh you saw him then. It should be fine now, you get a lot of them in London, but we’re out in the sticks, there shouldn’t be any more. And besides, they won’t do anything while I’m here. They have enough sense left to respect someone else’s property.”

“Property? I know you’ve pretty much made yourself at home here. But let’s be perfectly clear, you’re a guest. This place isn’t your territory or something.”

“I wasn’t talking about the house.” Ada said rolling her eyes. “I’m going for a swim.” She grabbed a towel from the laundry room, opened the back door and headed out into the garden. He followed her outside.

“It’ll be sunrise soon.”

“I know, I just need to calm down.” Ada explained, toeing off her shoes and socks and removing her soiled clothing. “It relaxes me.” Down to her underwear now she dove head first into the clear blue water and sank to the bottom of the pool where she remained, lying on her back for a good few minutes.

 “I’ll never get used to you doing that.” James complained, sitting on the back steps as she finally resurfaced. “Someone died in there last year.”

“Who?”

“Friend of a friend. Fell in while drunk and hit his head. I wasn’t at home though. Cassandra found him the next morning.”

 “Jesus.” Said Ada “No wonder she was so upset when she saw me.”

“Yeah she was pretty shaken up.”

“Have you heard from her at all? You know, since the bath incident?”

“She went back to LA the last I heard. Why? Are you jealous?”

“Why would I feel jealous?”

“Never mind.”

“I mean I suppose you could say I might be slightly envious that she gets to live a normal life and go out in the sun and eat ice cream, but I feel that way about most people.” She said. She was playing ignorant, avoiding the subject.

“Do you remember when Adam went to Morocco?” James asked finally.

“Yes.”

“And I took you to see Pink Floyd at the Camden Festival.”

“Oh, you mean that time you said you were going to catch up with some friends and never came back, and I had to walk home alone in the middle of the night? That festival?”

“Well if I’d been a gentleman and walked you home, do you think I would have been in with a chance.”

“Probably. I was fifteen and I hated myself, it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“What about now?”

“Now, I hate everyone else.”

“Now I know that’s not true. You could have left me to die, but you didn’t. So you can’t really hate everyone.”

“You’re just useful. Don’t get cocky about it.”

“Am I? You don’t really stand to gain that much from this arrangement in the grander scheme of things. There’s the blood of course, and a bit of stability, but you could probably find that somewhere else if you wanted. And apparently I belong to you now, that wasn’t part of the deal. So the only conclusion I can come to is that you like having me around.”

“That’s just an old archaic law, it doesn’t mean anything anymore.” Ada protested. “My blood puts a mark on you that lets the others know you’re under my protection, that’s all.”

“Do you belong to Adam?” James asked. She hesitated for a moment before answering, the question must have been a sore point for her.

“Yes, and Eve. Ever since I was a child.” She said finally. “How’s that sunrise looking?”

“The sky’s getting red.” She climbed out of the water and dried off.

“Then it’s time for bed. Hey, do you want to try something cool?”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

That morning was the first of the few rare occasions when she let James sleep by her side. He found that they could share their dreams if she held his hand. Not a regular dream but a vast, vibrant lucid dream where anything was possible. Sometimes he remembered them when he woke up, other times he didn’t, but she with her perfect recall remembered them all. He wanted more, but knew that it was a gift of sorts, something very personal she had chosen to share with him. And for that he was grateful. 


	10. The Dorchester

Chapter 10 - The Dorchester

 

**Liverpool 2013**

There was that girl again. He’d seen her a while back at the Welcome Week mixer, and a few weeks after that at the Maguire’s gig, and again at the Battle of the Bands heats. All those times she had been alone, she had ordered a measure of whisky but hadn’t touched it and then left as soon as the last set was over. She couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, but she didn’t look like any of the freshers that went around in packs on seemingly mandatory pub crawls, and all had the same sort of self-conscious trying too hard style that would inevitable devolve into hoodies and dirty jeans before the autumn term was over. In fact she carried herself as though she were much older. She might have been a local kid but it was almost unheard of for scouse girls to venture out in public without doing their hair and makeup. She was small and thin with a lot of dark messy hair and he probably would never have noticed her if she hadn’t been the absolute spitting image of Ada Young.

The haunting music that had been with him since he was born. A sound that was both beautiful and challenging, an underrated cult classic. The record had taken pride of place in his parent’s record collection. The rare first pressing of Lilith’s Children, the one with the gatefold inside cover that contained possibly one of the only existing images of Adam Drese, another musical powerhouse who had died far too young. The composition of the photograph looked like something out of an Edward Robert Hughes painting with Drese looking dead and ashen beneath tangled thorns, crows landing beside him. And it was appropriate since his angular face and long dark hair would look equally at home in a meeting of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as he would at a rock venue. The picture had always frightened him as a child, but also held a morbid fascination, especially since if you put the outside and inside cover images together it looked as though the girl on the front cover, lying on her stomach in a meadow gazing in profile into the distance, was about to discover a dead body.

The band playing was almost about to finish. This was his chance to talk to her before she disappeared again. He made his way over to the table she was sitting at. Despite being in the darkest corner of the bar she still wore sunglasses, leather gloves even though it was stiflingly warm inside, and an old brown leather jacket, scuffed and scratched in several places.

“Hey sorry to be weird but do you know you look almost exactly like Ada Young.”

“Oh yeah I get that all the time.”

“Are you a student here?”

“No. Just stopping by.”

“I’m John by the way.”

“Um…Anna.”

“Do you play at all?”

“Um yeah, piano originally, and I sing.”

“Cool, are you thinking of joining the band society? You know we have a lot of new groups this year looking for a frontman…or woman. It’s a bit extra for non-students but everyone’s welcome. I’m the treasurer so I can tell you all about what we do here.”

“Oh, I’m just here to watch.”

“Well, can I buy you a drink?”

“No thank you. I should really head off.”

“Oh God, I’m bothering you aren’t I, I’m really sorry.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just that it’s getting late and my parents will be worried.”

“You’re parents? How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Really? Christ no wonder I was creeping you out.”

“Why? How old are you?”

“I’m twenty three.”

“I’ve encountered creepier.”

“So how do you end up in a place like this, do you have a fake ID or something?”

“I have several, look.”

“Camilla Macaulay?” he said looking at the surprisingly good passport forgery. It must have cost a fortune. What kind of kid was able to get their hands on something like this?

“It’s from a book.”

“Do your parents know you go out drinking?”

“I don't know.” She replied, “It’s more for the music than the drinking. Do you want this?” she handed him her untouched glass of scotch.

“Um thanks.”

“I’ll see you around. You guys sounded good tonight.”

“Wait, we’re playing at this Halloween party next Friday at Bumper. Do you want to come? It’s all going to be spooky cover songs.”

“Thriller?”

“Of course.”

“Yeah, alright. Maybe.” she grinned, and disappeared through the crowd and out into the street as though she were nothing more than a phantom.

 

* * *

 

 

**Detroit 2005**

“Hey, are you sure you don’t want anything?” the kid, Ian, said and took a bite out of the burger Adam had bought him. It looked disgusting, all chemicals and starch and not much else. He’d found the boy, badly beaten and barely conscious in a back street on his drive home, drawn to the scene by the smell of blood. He should have just kept driving but something had made him turn around and heal him.

“No thank you I already ate.” Adam shrugged, the buzzing of the strobe lights of the McDonalds were beginning to irritate him and burn his eyes even through the sunglasses he was wearing.

“Good thing you found me when you did, man.”

“What happened?”

“Oh nothing, I owe a guy some money.” He didn’t elaborate but it didn’t take genius to figure out what for.

“How old are you?” He looked young, but all zombies looked young to him.

“Seventeen.”

Seventeen and already in with a bad crowd. What a waste of potential. But there was something oddly endearing about the boy. He knew he was only thinking that way because he was about the same age she had been, had the same slouching posture, the same awkward thinness although Ian’s seemed more like the result of a growth spurt rather than any sort of malnourishment, the same greasy hair hanging in front of his face dyed black but with brown roots showing through. He took a wad of cash from his jacket pocket “How much do you owe?”

“Oh no, man, I couldn’t. I don’t even know who you are or what your name is?”

“It’s Adam.”

“Still, no offence but you don’t exactly look like the kind of guy who’d give someone money and like, not expect something in return, y’know.”

“That’s a fair point.” Adam huffed. Then a thought struck him. “Can you drive?”

“Sure.”

“Do you have a car?”

“I can borrow my mom’s.”

“That’ll do for now. Do you know anything about guitars?”

“I can play a little.”

“Ok, nevermind.” He patted his jacket pockets down until he found an old biro and a chequebook. “I need you to drive out to Lansing to this address.” He pulled off his gloves and began scribbling on a paper napkin. “Tell them Adam sent you, they’ve got a rather interesting L-5 I want to buy, also see if they have any other pre-war archtops. Once you’ve got them bring them to this address. If you can get that done by Sunday night, I’ll give you five hundred dollars.” It was a test, nothing more. His last ‘assistant’, Wilson, had run off with some rather valuable pocket watches he’d given him to sell at auction and hadn’t been seen since. And he was sorely in need of someone to do his daytime errands. Plus the boy already had his blood in him, which made things easier, not that he would ever use it or anything, but it was good have a safeguard in place in case he pulled a similar stunt.

“Five hundred? Just for picking up a guitar?” Ian said in disbelief. Then he glanced at the address. “Holy shit dude, you live in that creepy old house? I thought that place was derelict.”

“Well it needs a little renovating but I wouldn’t call it creepy. Do you want to do the job or not?”

“Umm sure. Sunday right?” Ian said, looking as though he wasn’t sure about this decision. Adam wrote out a check, leaving the amount blank along with some money for gas.

“I keep odd hours so you’ll have to come by in the evening, no earlier than eight o’clock.” He told him, getting up to leave.

“Okay.”

“Do you need a ride home?”

“Um… no, no I can walk from here.”

“Alright then. Oh, and don’t tell anyone about this.” Adam added but before Ian could ask any more questions, he was gone.

 

* * *

 

**London 1975**

Once James was well enough to attend rehearsals they had moved out of the farmhouse and back to his house in Hammersmith. The move had a few good points, it was good to be back in the city. James was always bringing her little gifts that he picked up on his way home, books and records he thought she would like since she quickly had gone over his entire collection and while his music taste was very eclectic she wasn’t as keen on crime fiction as he was. The country had been beautiful but there were only so many walks in the woods at night she could take, being watched silently from a distance by the owls and the deer and the foxes. She had tried singing to them, but they weren’t impressed.

Here she could wander the streets again like she used to, go to gigs and the movies. In the darkness of the cinema the bright screen gave her a headache after a while and it just wasn’t the same going alone. She had tried bringing James along, to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail and it would have been wonderful if it weren’t for his wandering hands. Not that she didn’t crave physical affection, his arms were warm and he was definitely attractive in a Marc Bolan sort of way, now that he had gained a little weight and no longer looked like a walking skeleton. After caring for someone for so long she couldn’t help feeling something comparable to love.

If she hadn’t been afflicted with her current condition she may well have thrown caution to the wind and accepted his kisses. But now something about the idea made her uncomfortable. With her blood a claim had been made, one that not only assured him her protection but also inflicted a certain amount of control on her part, like a guard and a prisoner or more accurately like a master and a slave. And it didn’t matter if she never used that power, it would always be there looming over them like some hideous gargoyle. But sometimes after a blood binge she would feel her inhibitions were lowered enough to share a dream with him and feel their imagined sun on her skin on rugged landscapes from half remembered trips to the Lake District or pictures of the Swiss Alps. She would wake up at dusk with a proprietary arm draped across her waist and tried not to think about the summer at Ambleside and how Adam had held her in his sleep in much the same way.

 

The dreams had grown darker lately, elements from their subconscious were beginning to break through, and while James’s nightmares were nothing particularly alarming, just poison dreams really that held no real significance, Ada’s dreams were a whole different animal. While she had been no stranger to bad dreams as a child, the mental enhancements and perfect recall that came with the change had amplified them into a sharp, almost cinematic retelling of all her worst experiences. This one had started innocently enough, the two of the lying on a forest floor, watching the dappled sunlight that shone between the lush oak leaves, when a cold breeze rustled through the branches and Adam, or at least a version of Adam, red eyed, fangs bared, hair and clothes filthy with dried blood, has stepped into the clearing.

“Is that…?” she hear James say behind her as the forest suddenly turned dark, the leaves shrivelled to brown and began to fall.

“You need to wake up now.” She warned. The trees had shifted closer together until they slipped into the familiar wooden panelling of the hallway in the old house, the leaves on the ground turning to carpet.

“What’s going on?”

“Wake up, then wake me up!” she cried, beginning to panic now. This part, no matter how many times she had to re-live it, never got any easier.

She had hoped that he would be able to pull them out of it before she was dragged down into the basement, clattering down the wooden stairs, hitting her head on the top step, bruising a knee on another, a rib cracking on another, sealed up in the soundproofed studio before she had time to scream, total darkness, bruising grip, burning teeth, the dull sound as an arc of arterial blood sprayed up the padded wall, then nothing.

She opened her eyes, she was back in reality, in James’ bedroom, it was dark aside from the hands of the glow in the dark alarm clock, it was a quarter to seven, James was breathing heavily next to her, visibly shaken.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.” She said huddling under the covers.

 

They hadn’t slept together since.

 

The place was tiny compared to other house which had essentially allowed them to live in separate buildings for the most part. Now they were constantly on top of each other when they were at home, the disgusting smells of cooking and garbage and drains and exhaust fumes from outside hung around in carpets and the sheets. It alarmed her how being around him for so long in such a small space made her so hungry, his heartbeat drumming away tauntingly as though it were a clock counting down. His blood, polluted for certain, was still a constant source of temptation. When she had been alone she could go all day without noticing the thirst but now he found herself drinking more than she should. She didn’t have to worry about running out, somehow the supply always replenished itself while she was sleeping.  She had more energy than usual when she fed, for a few hours at least but when the blood wore off it left her feeling tired and burned out and she spent most of her evenings spaced out in front of the television or listening to music or just staring off into space.

 

She wondered how much it all cost. Back when she was still able to use her contact with Adam’s doctor it had cost her fifty pounds per pint which added up to two hundred pounds a month on blood alone when a regular wage was thirty pounds a week. It could only have gone up in price since then and because it was all extremely illegal the supplier was in a position to charge whatever he wanted. And once the revenue from the album had run out, a lot faster than she had planned, she could no longer afford the luxury of regular feeding. If she had asked him for it, Adam might have sent her money, but she had been too proud. After several millennia Eve and Adam’s fortune was vast, in land and assets if not in cash. The stuff they kept in their houses easily worth thousands in London auction houses was just pocket change to them, and he had and Eve had a whole vault in a Swiss bank somewhere filled with Strativaris and Rembrandts, a lost Faberge egg with a blue enamelled constellation map and a working orrery hidden inside (a present from Tsar Alexander the third). Then there were the houses, she had no idea how many, and suspected they didn’t either. A safe house in almost every major city, country retreats, the manor house in Cumbria, the castle in Austria that she had only seen pictures of.

 

James wasn’t faring much better than she was, still fragile and nervous about the looming tour and whether he would not only be able to sound good but whether he would be well enough to travel in general. When a rehearsal had gone badly or if there had been an argument within the band, which happened fairly often, he returned home sullen and irritable and when she refused his advances or said no when he pestered her for blood he would sometimes disappear for days and come home smelling of drink and women’s perfume. After a few weeks of quasi-sobriety at the farmhouse, she had got him to stop fixing with the promise of more of her blood although he was still popping morphine and mandrax pills like parma violets, it soon became pretty clear that he had been using again once they returned to London. What exactly she hadn’t been sure of, but he had an unpleasant chemical smell about him sometimes that raised some red flags. Slowly but surely she could feel things slipping out of her control.

 

On the evening of Blue Equinox’s launch party for their fifth album, Ada did her best not to fidget as James made the finishing touches to her lipstick. It was blood red, the irony wasn’t lost on her. The last time she had worn any sort of makeup she had still been alive. Since then there hadn’t been much point, that and not being able to use a mirror was a pretty severe handicap when it came to such things. She had often wondered about Adam’s almost constant bad hair days. ‘More like a bad hair century’ Eve would laugh. But lately she had come to understand that at some point he had simply stopped caring.

Tonight was a different story, her hair had been curled and blow dried, James had bought her a floor length evening gown in black pleated chiffon, satin heels, perfume to cover up that decaying smell, and dark eyeshadow to make her look older than she actually was. James was fairly androgynous anyway with his long curly hair and slim build, but for a while in a bid to imitate more interesting artists like David Bowie he and Blue Equinox had worn a lot of makeup and glitter on stage. As a consequence he was surprisingly deft with an eye pencil.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Like a grown up.”

 “I’ll have to take your word for it.” She said glancing at the mirror on the dressing table in her bedroom, although there was no one to glance back.

“How does that even work anyway? Not having a reflection.”

“I don’t know, I think it’s just an illusion. You can do it in real life too, so you can hide in plain sight, but it’s difficult. I have a reflection but the brain just doesn’t register it. So I’m afraid I can’t see all your good work.”

“Maybe you can.” He took a Polaroid camera out of one of the drawers in the bedside table, why it was in there she didn’t really want to think about, and without any warning he snapped a photo. The flash of the bulb burned white hot, sending a spike of nauseating pain from her eyes right back into her skull.

“Ow! Fuck!” she cursed as she squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t do that!”

“Sorry.”

“What part of ‘bright lights hurt vampires’ don’t you understand?”

“I’m sorry, I forgot.”

“Can I borrow your sunglasses?”

“At night?”

“They’ll be more flash photography when we get there. And my eyes might change with all those people around. And I need the hip flask, and your cigarettes.”

“Can you even smoke?”

“Yeah, not that I get anything out of it anymore. Once you go red, nothing else really comes close, you know. It’ll make me look more human since I won’t be eating or drinking anything.” She explained and James laughed as he held the front door open for her where a car was waiting for them.

“Trust me, weird eyes, not eating, you won’t look out of place. Are you ready?” he said opening the car door for her. His black Rolls Royce, the first thing he had bought when the band had started making serious money, even though he hadn’t learned to drive yet.  

“Yes, but I still don’t see why you would want to bring me.”

“We’re announcing the label. You should be there.”

“What if someone recognises me? What if they start asking questions?” she had thought that she had been largely forgotten by the music world, but lately on her nightly outings people had begun to recognise her, a few of them even trying to strike up conversations or asked for autographs. It really was strange.

“You’ve taken a break from music in order to focus on your education. That’s sort of the truth.” He replied playfully. “Or that you’ve been shacked up with me. Also partly true.”

“What if they ask about Adam?”

“I don’t know. Make something up.” He said, mood changing almost instantly. Adam had become a sore point lately, since the nightmare, although they hadn’t exactly talked about it. The image of the Polaroid had begun to appear out of the black glossy photograph, starting from the corner and gradually growing clearer, but stopped for a moment too long at the hem of Ada’s dress, as though her image was reluctant to be exposed. She hadn’t seen herself in years, and the person in the photo certainly didn’t look like anyone she could remember. James was right, she did look grown up.

They weren’t even there yet but she was already out of her mind with hunger. Maybe it was her nerves, or maybe it was because the car was blasting hot air everywhere and the driver smelled delicious. She took a sip from her flask and almost gagged. Clearly James’ ‘doctor’ had changed suppliers, and not to a good one either. The blood up until now had been whole blood with a CPD anti-coagulant solution that made it last between 11 and 21 days depending on how fresh it was. What she had now was a red blood cell solution, and it was old, almost gone bad. The solution itself wasn’t poisonous, and she had fed on it in the past when there hadn’t been anything else but it was truly disgusting. It reminded her a little of the horrible instant coffee she had drunk in boarding school.

‘Well, that’s the end of that then.’ She thought.

“Did you and Adam ever…?” James said suddenly, clearly still bothered that she had mentioned him.

“Did we what?”

“Did you dream with him? Is that why he was there?”

“Of course. Who do you think showed me how to do it? But no, that wasn’t actually him, that was just my subconscious leaking into the dream.”

“So, that was what exactly, a memory? Was that how it happened?” he placed the emphasis on ‘it’ as though it were some sort of illicit act, which she didn’t appreciate.

“I told you it wasn’t pretty.”

“But you stayed with him. After…that. Why would you stay?”

“It’s not that simple. You wouldn’t understand.”

“It just seems weird, letting him in your brain like that after what he did to you.”

“It’s really none of your business. It’s in the past. Can we please change the subject?” Ada said angrily and they lapsed into a long and tense silence.

“Did you fuck him?” James asked finally.

“What? No! Jesus!”

“But you were feeding off each other, which I’m beginning to think is practically the same thing to you people.” He said in an angry whisper, careful in case the chauffer might be listening.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, you can’t just keep me all wound up like this and not do anything about it. It’s torture.”

“You’re almost better. We can easily stop, if it’s bothering you. I mean you’re leaving soon, I don’t have to be here when you get back.”

“No. No, that’s not what I meant at all. You can’t honestly be this oblivious.”

“I’m not oblivious. It’s just a terrible idea to get involved like that.”

“We’re already involved like that. Or at least we would be if you weren’t still so hung up on him.”

“It astounds me that you think that’s the only reason I won’t sleep with you.”

“Just come on the tour with me.”

“What are you going to do? Put me in a crate? I can’t travel during daylight.”

“We’ve hired a Learjet this time, we can reschedule the flight times.”

“Are you going to bring blood on the plane? You’re a rock band, customs will be going over it with a fine toothed comb in every country. They love raiding that shit.”

“We can get some contacts in place for when we get there.” He said emphatically and Ada sighed loudly. “Please, I need you.”

‘You need my blood. That’s a very different thing.’ She thought to herself.

 

The party was held in the Orchid Room at the Dorchester Hotel and to her dismay there were mirrors absolutely everywhere. Luckily nobody seemed to notice, too wrapped up in their champagne and liquor and sneaking off to the bathrooms every ten minutes. There was a rumour that Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were staying somewhere in the hotel although the dirty crowds that were usually associated with Blue Equinox’s rather dark reputation probably wouldn’t have interested them and they hadn’t made an appearance. Cassandra was there, on the arm of some actor whose name she couldn't remember. She took one look at Ada and made a hasty exit.

 

Mike Daniels, the band’s lead singer greeted her like an old friend although she hadn’t seen any of them since she was sixteen. The rest of the band greeted her warmly, and more than once mentioned how good it was that James seemed to be getting better. Perhaps they had known all along about the cancer, or at least were beginning to work it out. Or perhaps they had just been worried about the drugs. Either way, there was no denying that James was looking good. Supernaturally good in fact, he was practically glowing and was as youthfully handsome as he had been the day she’d met him. But there was a nasty edge to it all, something that she didn’t really like but couldn’t quite identify. Truthfully she had no idea what sort of effect long term blood drinking had on humans, and that perhaps like all medicines it needed to be carefully regulated to avoid overdoses or addiction. Everyone was hot and smelled of nauseating aftershaves and body odour, and their pulses were racing under their skin. The album began to play through the large sound system in the corner, and it was bad, even by their standards. She was about to duck out to attempt to drink the blood solution again, when a man with a huge cigar came over to greet her.

 

“Excuse me, but are you Ada Young?” he said, his American accent sounding strange and out of place.

“I am.”

“This is insane, we’d all thought you’d disappeared or thrown yourself on Adam Drese’s funeral pyre or something. Where have you been?” she looked at him with mild confusion, then remembered that in his usual overly dramatic style, Adam had staged his own death before he had left England.  “Jack Flowers, I work for Algorhythm Management. I have to say I’m a huge fan.” He carried on when she didn’t answer. He handed her his business card.

“Nice name, would you say you have an effective method for hit-making?” she replied.

“What?”

“Sorry, terrible joke.”

“Oh right, sure.” he said, giving a rather forced chuckled “Do you like the album?”

“It’s shit.”

“Didn’t even have to think about that, did you?” he laughed. “So how do you know the band?”

“James Green did some session work for me for a while before they got started.”

“Really? That was him on your album?”

“Some of it was, yeah. The twin guitar harmonies.”

“That’s incredible. I’m surprised you would stay in touch with them?” he said, which she found strange.

“They’re alright. They’re nice guys.” She replied. “Shame about the music though.”

“You’re right. They’ve never quite managed to live up to their first album. I mean that was a real masterpiece.”

“Hmm I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Not quite as good as Lilith’s Children in my opinion.” He pressed

“Oh well, you know, that was just an experiment really.” She said, embarrassed.

“You know it’s a shame it never did that well initially.”

“What do you mean initially? I thought it bombed.”

“Wow you really must have disappeared. You’re an underground classic! Every art student, prog-rock musician and pretentious asshole in the world has a copy.”

“I really should start opening my mail. Adam used to handle the finance side of things. And I've just, really not wanted anything to do with all of that, for a long time.”

"God, yes, I'm so sorry, it must be so terrible losing a mentor like that. And so young too. What was he, thirty four? Thirty five?"

"Thirty five."

"A real shame, he was so talented."

"I'm glad there's been a renewed interest in his work." Ada said, surprised at how naturally the lie came to her.

“Look it’s none of my business but you’re living with Jim Green right?”

“How did you know that?”

“He told me.”

“It’s temporary.”

“And he’s angling for you to join the label I take it?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Don’t do anything until you have a solid contract. And for Christ's sake don't play them any of your material. I’m sure you of all people would know about the plagiarism allegations. These people are crooks and if you give them the opportunity they’ll fleece you for all you’re worth.”

“Plagiarism?”

“You honestly don’t know? Are you kidding me? There have been like three different lawsuits about it, but they somehow always end up getting thrown out.”

“Fuck.”

“I wouldn’t get involved with those guys. If you ask me the whole thing’s a vanity project.” as he babbled on, the high energy of the previous tracks had mellowed down into an acoustic number, a suspiciously familiar melody rang out throughout the reception room. It was the song she had written before she had moved in with Adam, the first one they had recorded together, at least the melody was, with Mike’s crude lyrics slapped on top of it.

“What the fuck? That’s my song. I never played him that.”

“Seriously?” Jack frowned over his glasses.

“Yeah I wrote that when I was a kid.” She said, glad that she had remembered the sunglasses, her eyes must have turned crimson. “Those are NOT the lyrics.”

“Tough break. Now, if you were my client we might be able to negotiate something. I know a great lawyer.” She turned on him with an unnaturally harsh snarl, and the little man jumped back in shock.

“There’s nothing to negotiate. I’m going home.” She said, her voice low but dangerous.

“That’s a shame. Well if you change your mind, you’ve got my number.” He mumbled, less confident than before and quickly backed away.

The room suddenly felt too hot, and she was acutely aware of all the people there and all their heartbeats, pounding away like drums, stimulated by cocaine and god knows what else. She hadn’t been able to drink the blood solution, a huge mistake because now she was crashing and it took all her strength to get out of there and not sink her teeth into the nearest waiter. She grabbed her purse and rushed out into the night.

Outside on the street a cool breeze blew through Hyde Park. She lit one of James’ cigarettes, muscle memory kicking in even though she knew it wouldn’t do anything to calm her. The damage from the smoke healed instantly with a strange, almost pleasant tingle in her chest. This was it. She could leave right now if she wanted to. Just go home and forget about it. That was the best thing to do. It might not be easy to find another blood source, but she could do it. She had managed before.

 But James wasn’t completely healed yet, the tumour could easily come back again if she left now, and even if he stayed in remission at the rate he had been fixing lately he would probably still be dead by Christmas. Logically, she knew that wasn’t her problem. People died, there was no avoiding it. Why should this person be any different? To hell with him, all he did was take advantage of people. What business did she have helping someone who had done nothing to deserve it? A misguided teenage crush? A link to a past that in hindsight didn’t have much to merit being nostalgic about?

She stopped at the phone booth outside the hotel lobby, and before she had really thought it through she had stepped inside and began to feed 2p coins into the slot. It was only after she heard the ringing at the other end of the line that she realised what she was doing. She let it ring for a few seconds but to her surprise someone picked up.

“Hello?” the voice at the other end of the long distance line echoed like the inside of a tin can but it was definitely Adam, sleepy and confused. She practically burst into tears at the sound of his voice. She panicked and slammed the phone down again. No, this wasn’t worth crying to Adam over. What would she even tell him anyway? ‘Oh hi Adam. Do remember that guy who played guitar on our album and tried to steal your songs? Well now he’s trying to take my songs, and my blood, and possibly my virginity.’ He would just tell her to get her act together and stop being such an idiot. Or even worse, come back and get her, no arguments, no protests. The whole thing was stupid, and she was stupid because she saw it coming a mile away but let herself get involved anyway, out of pity.


	11. Waterloo Sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning - The following chapter contains violent and gory scenes that might be upsetting to some readers.

**London 1967**

 

“Are you cold?” Adam asked once she had caught up with him half way down the hill as they made their way back to the Underground station.

“A little.” It was easily below freezing and her coat was old and had a huge rip in the lining, but the adrenaline of their encounter with the other vampire and whatever it was that Adam’s singing voice had done made the cold seem trivial.

“I’m always cold so I’m not much help I’m afraid. Take my coat,” he said, slouching it off and wrapping it around Ada’s shoulders.

“Thanks.” He was right, the cold leather didn’t really help all that much and it smelled of mothballs and musty attics.

“Are you alright?”

“I feel… good actually. Suspiciously good. I mean, I know I’m terrified and I think I’m on the verge of having a heart attack but I feel really good, you know. Is that because of the singing?”

“Yeah.”

“You should do it more often,” she said, grabbing hold of his hand as they walked. That was weird, she hardly ever touched people voluntarily.

“Really?” Even through the wool of her gloves, his hand was still freezing. He didn’t seem to mind though, and laced his fingers with hers.

“Yeah, you could just make everyone chill out and then there wouldn’t be any more wars.”

“I don’t think it’s strong enough for that.” He smiled sadly.

“How come you never sing on your records? If you did you’d probably be top of the charts.”

“It’s not exactly something I feel comfortable doing. It might be beautiful and it can be used for good things like making people happy, but it’s essentially nothing more than a siren song.”

“Oh.” Suddenly the irrational punch drunk heart racing happiness she felt didn’t feel quite so wonderful. She wondered how long it would last, and how she would feel afterwards. She had been practically skipping before, and swinging their arms as they walked like a little kid. She slowed to a halt, the absurd terror of the situation washing over her in a wave of nausea.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it. It’s just been such a long time since I’ve told a human about it, I think I just got carried away,” Adam said, noticing her discomfort. “I would never use it to hurt someone. And besides, it doesn’t really translate well in the recording process. Actually it really messes with my equipment for some reason.”

“Is that connected to you not having a reflection?” Ada asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“And how you look all weird in your pictures.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, like the one of you and Jerry Wexler. It’s you but it doesn’t look like you.”

“I suppose I don’t photograph well. Most of the time I’m just a blur.”

“Maybe it’s because you shouldn’t exist.” He looked a little taken aback by her comment, and she regretted saying it as soon as the words flew out of her mouth. ‘Don’t be a slag, Ada. He can’t help the way he is,’ she thought. He was quiet for a moment, as they waited on the underground platform.

“Ada, if you want me to take you home, we can go back. We could just get another train,” he said finally, looking resigned and more than a little upset.

“All my stuff is at your place.”

“I mean, you can leave whenever you want. I’ll understand if you don’t feel safe anymore,” he explained, and she wondered why he would invite her to stay with him in the first place if he thought it wasn’t safe. Perhaps she was imposing on him and he was too polite to say so.

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked tentatively.

“No.” he said quickly “No, I…I want give you everything you’ve ever wanted.” She eyed him warily. What did he even mean by that?

“I don’t know what I want.” she replied. “I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t want to be cold, or dirty. I don’t want to be hungry.”

“I think I can manage that.” He smiled “Ada, I promise you, you’ll never go hungry again.”

“As God is my witness…” she smiled ruefully.

“What?”

“Gone with the Wind? It’s a film with Vivien Leigh.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Christ, you really are a shut in, aren’t you?” 

Years later, Ada would replay that conversation in her head over and over again, remembering it word for word thanks to her newly enhanced vampire memory. She had almost hoped that crossing over would allow a person to forget their human life, but sadly no such luck. Not only did she keep all her old memories, but she started to remember things from her early childhood. Things that were better off being forgotten. Never go hungry again, indeed! Her entire existence was hunger. If she dwelled on it too long she would work herself up into a horrible bloodthirsty rage that was hard to get out of. One time she had ran all through the night until she reached the coast and had to hurl herself off Beachy Head into the sea to avoid finding a town and attacking the nearest human. She had climbed back up the cliff when all her bones had knitted themselves back together and she had vomited up the freezing seawater she had swallowed and finally felt calm again.

 

When they got home, Eve seemed to know immediately that she had found out, probably just by the look on her face. She had hugged her close in an icy grip and kissed her on the top of her head, her cold lips making her feel woozy even through her hair. The relief of not having to keep such a secret, not that she had put much effort into keeping it, made her seem almost physically altered, and more relaxed than before.

The weekend soon turned into a week, with no news from the police. And after maybe the twelfth day in that house, Eve had explained that sometimes some people didn’t want to be found. It had been just as she had expected. She had felt hurt, then she had been angry. She barely left her room for days. Why the hell did her mother try so hard to get her back last time if she was just going to up and leave again? Did she believe Ada would be better off with a pair of strangers than she was at the borstal? Had she been trying to find someone to pawn her off on since Granddad died and Adam was the first suitable candidate? Would she have cared if she had known who they really were? _What_ they really were? Last time she had been so happy to get out of that place, an approved school for intelligent but troubled girls where all the punishments were corporal, she had forgiven her mother without hesitation. Now that she was a little older she didn’t feel quite so forgiving.

Shortly after she moved in, the house was transformed into something that was almost fit for human habitation. The ancient radiators groaned back to life although it was still draftier than the ninth circle of hell, the water got reconnected but ran red at first as it heaved through the rusty pipes, and one morning she woke up to find the whole house completely spotless save for one tiny spot from a drop of dried blood that stained the sofa. They did it in the living room? Great, that wasn’t traumatising at all.

They had even got a refrigerator, or at least she suspected, had moved it into the kitchen from some secret hiding place. It was a large pale blue American make she had never seen before with a freezer and four half-gallon Stanley flasks lined up on the bottom shelf – (New house rule ‘Do NOT touch the flasks.’)  There was no way they could have leaked but it still unsettled her that they would keep human blood next to the milk and leftover Chow Mein. It didn’t matter that it came from a hospital, and that no one had been hurt in the process, it was still horrifying to think about.

Adam seemed simultaneously confused and enchanted by her everyday existence and all the accoutrements that came with it. He was perplexed by all the weird and wonderful convenience foods that were becoming popular, and how a sachet of powder could turn into soup or a custard pudding. He marvelled at all the chemicals in her shampoo claiming that in his day people used egg whites and rum. The next evening she noticed both he and Eve had much tidier hair than usual, and that her conditioner had almost run out.

Both Adam and Eve had a strange approach to discipline. They didn’t seem to care if she skipped school, or didn’t do her homework. Adam had called it an indoctrination process that groomed people for the factories and Eve had taken one look at the history project that was due that week and seemed almost personally offended. Nor did they care about money, often handing her whole wads of cash, as much as five or even ten pounds at a time, before she left the house, far more than she could ever possibly need. They didn’t care if she ate chocolate for breakfast. They didn’t even scold her for leaving her stuff all over the living room, probably because they themselves were even worse when it came to clutter.

However they were incredibly strict about curfews. She was allowed to go out on her own during the daytime as much as she wanted, but if she stayed out so much as a second after sunset they would both come down on her like a ton of bricks. She was allowed to go out at night as long as one of them went with her, but convincing them to let her out at all was a long and strenuous bargaining process. After an unfortunate incident where she nearly walked in on them feeding, she was no longer allowed to come down from the top floor once she had gone to bed. She wasn’t allowed to touch any sharp objects or do anything that would result in getting hurt, no handling knives, and definitely no bike riding, and if she didn’t have her first aid kit on her at all times she would be in for a solid hour of lecturing. It was as though they were trying to wrap her up in cotton wool.

She wasn’t sure what she had done to merit the kind of doting attention Adam and Eve heaped upon her. She was admittedly quite bright for her age and good at music, but there wasn’t anything particularly special about her. Perhaps they felt sorry for her and were trying to keep her from dwelling too much on the situation. Or perhaps they thought of her as some sort of pet. She knew they fed off humans but perhaps they found them cute at the same time, like lambs. Whatever it was, her presence seemed to make them happy, which made her happy, or at least less depressed. They would enthusiastically answer all her questions, and tell her stories, some of which were a tall order to believe. She played them all of her records from her small collection feeling a little embarrassed that it wasn’t especially worldly or sophisticated, just things like Freddie and the Dreamers and Cilla Black, and her beloved slightly worn out copy of Revolver. In return Adam picked out things from his vast library of music, going on long and rambling tangents about what influenced what until they had completely lost track of time and it was three in the morning. Three soon became four, and four soon became six thirty.

 

So as the days drew on, and she stayed up later and later and began to sleep through most of the morning, Ada had quickly become a chronic truancy case. She had only gone to school before so she wouldn’t have to be alone in the house, or worse alone with her mother at her lowest. Even though the whole time she was there Ada would have horrible guilt-ridden waking nightmares of coming home and finding her dead. Now, she didn’t feel like doing much of anything during the day, and since she secretly loathed school now that it was no longer the lesser of two evils, she simply stopped going. She had neglected to tell anyone about her change of address, and it had seemed as though she, like her mother, had disappeared. She wondered if they had even noticed she was gone. Instead in the evenings when her new foster parent’s woke up, her education continued in earnest, although very informally.

Eve was fairly traditional in her tutoring approach, conscious that a certain degree of structured home schooling was important to a young person’s development. She focused on literature, history and world languages as well as philosophy. They would spend a few hours each evening on a different subject where Ada was usually given a book to read and when she was done they would talk about it. It was all very pedagogical, it its own way, and it occurred to her that Eve may well have taught countless others in the same way, as far back as the ancient Greeks or even the Egyptians. It also became abundantly clear that she was being given a rare opportunity to be tutored by someone who had not only experienced more than a few important historical events first hand, but who also spoke over eighty languages including a few dead ones. She had explained that once a person turned their brain began to work differently, and parts of it that had been dormant as a human suddenly flared to life, including having perfect recall. Therefore it was possible to read a dictionary or lexicon and hang around a few native speakers and effectively be fluent in a few weeks. She demonstrated this by skim reading the first chapter of The Owl Service then reciting it back to her verbatim. She had only bought the book that afternoon.

Adam on the other hand was far more capricious in his teaching methods, sometimes giving her ordinary projects like ‘compose a short piece in the sonata rondo form’ or slightly more unusual challenges like ‘try and convey what a glacier would sound like.’ The main focus of their music lessons had soon turned to writing what would eventually become an album together, which seemed a little optimistic in her opinion. However they would not be recording for some time, there were still so many things they needed to do. This included the long and painstaking process of building new equipment like a new mixing console, and fixing the Novachord. She had no idea how he had managed to move the hulking great thing into the house but it was fascinating to work on it with someone who claimed to have drunk the blood of Nikola Tesla. It was through these night-long tinkering sessions that she learned advanced electronics which led to talking about physics and the other sciences. Adam mostly taught these subjects by going on long and rambling lectures which never went in the direction she was expecting them to go. They usually ended with her falling asleep in her chair as the sun rose outside and getting carried upstairs to bed.

 

* * *

 

**London 1975**

 

Darkness, familiar damp smell, silence, cold arm draped over her. She had been dreaming about the old days and for a brief moment had thought that she was a kid again and had fallen asleep in the recording studio. Wait a sec. She had fallen asleep in the recording studio, or what was left of it. She was in Adam’s basement. Had she brought someone here with her? Someone cold like her which meant that she had either run into another vampire on the way home or… She looked down at the arm that lay across her stomach, it felt stiff and unnaturally still. Nope, definitely not a vampire.

“Shit! Shit!” she heard herself hiss. How many people had to fucking die in this house?

That was definitely a corpse lying on the floor next to her. She yelped and like lightning she threw the arm off her and scrambled clumsily to her feet tripped over a box of wires and fell flat on her face again. She felt around around for her cigarette lighter and lit a candle to get a better look. The room was in chaos. Her dress from the party was now torn to shreds on the floor, and there were shards of smashed records and various things had been broken or knocked over. Had there been a struggle? Or had she done it afterwards in some sort of frenzy. There was dried blood on her skin and her slip and underwear were so soaked in it the fabric had gone rigid. Oh what happened? What happened! She had never blacked out like that before, but then she’d never drank a whole person before. Her watch read three o’clock, but was it the morning or the afternoon? Had she only passed out for three hours, or had it been longer?

Not being able to put it off any longer, she turned to look at what was left of the body. The dead woman lay on her stomach wearing a peach coloured evening gown, blonde hair obscuring her face. She looked like how Ada imagined Marilyn Monroe might have looked when she died only less glamourous and more rigor mortisey and….purple. She bit back a sob.

‘Alright, Ada, pull yourself together. You’ve obviously crossed a major moral boundary here. Now is not the time to be a wuss about it.’ She thought to herself. If only she could remember what had happened last night. For the most part blood drinking didn’t have many negative side effects, as long as it was clean. But Adam had told her once that if the victim’s blood alcohol level was too high, which it must have been because her head hurt like a bitch, it could lead to a sort of second hand intoxication and later a second hand hangover. She remembered how much of a rush it had been, feeding from the vein for the first time. Incomparable to the cold sterile packs of donor blood she was used to. Great, she remembered the blood, but not the person it belonged to, how rude.

They had been at the party, and she hadn’t fed, and she was angry and there had been Champagne flavoured lips and the scent of Chanel No19…

She brushed the woman’s hair back to reveal the face of James’ ex-girlfriend. Ok, now she remembered how it happened.

She had been about to go back to the party and they had run into each other. They had both been crying. And it had been stupid of her, but she had been so hungry and she smelled so good.

 

* * *

**Earlier that evening...**

 

“Hello,” Ada said surprised.

“Hi” Cassandra looked at her nervously trying to wipe away her running mascara. She wore her hair down in cascading blonde waves and her peach silk gown and tanned skin made her look like a sunrise. A complete contrast to Ada’s shadowy figure.

“How are you doing?”

“How do you think I’m doing?” She offered her a cigarette from the crumpled packet but the woman shook her head. She looked older than her but in terms of years Ada guessed they were probably around the same age. “What about you, you don’t look so good.”

She was right, Ada was ravenous. She tried not to look at the former model’s plunging neckline, and the wide expanse of golden skin it revealed. She had felt it the first time they’d met although in all her confusion and panic she hadn’t had time to think about it. But now there was no denying it, this was more about hunger. She wasn’t sure if the change had made her that way or if it was something that had always been there. Perhaps it didn’t matter. When you lived forever things like sexual identity or even gender were no longer much of a cause for concern. The need for blood took precedence and while sex could be an enjoyable pastime it struggled to live up to the pleasure of feeding.

“Well, to be honest I’m torn between walking away from here and never coming back, and going back in slaughtering everyone in that hotel,” Ada said morbidly.

“That bad, huh?”

“I thought you had gone back to LA.”

“I am. Tomorrow morning in fact. So don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair soon.” The Blonde laughed “I’m sorry, I didn’t think he’d bring you tonight. If I’d known, I probably wouldn’t have come. I don’t even know why I’m crying. I’m so embarrassed.”

“About what?” Ada asked.

“I don’t know, showing up here tonight. I don’t know what I was thinking that would achieve. I didn’t want to make him jealous exactly, well maybe I did but it’s not as though I want him back. I guess I just wanted to save face, show everyone how much better I’m doing. And maybe piss him off a little.”

“Oh well there’s no need to be embarrassed.”

“He’s looking good though. What is it some sort of special diet or something?”

“You could say that.” If she only knew.

“Well whatever it is I want some, he looks about ten years younger. You must be keeping him in line.”

“What?”

“Well you’re together now, right? That’s what he’s been telling everyone.”

“Has he now.” She could feel the anger boiling up to the surface and did her best to calm down. Why was she so volatile tonight? It was as though all her feelings had been amplified. She had called Adam for God’s sake.

“You’re not sleeping together?”

“No.”

“Wow. Well don’t let him talk you into doing something you’re not comfortable with, ok. You seem like a sensible kid and everything but he must be, what….ten, fifteen years older than you. He just has a way of… He used to like taking pictures of me, you know, and…oh God, it’s so humiliating.”

“Really? Shit.”

“Oh, believe me that’s nothing. He liked to watch me trip out on acid, and then we’d have sex. Only I would be high and he wasn’t, or sometimes we’d both be high I guess, and you know I enjoyed it to a certain extent but that stuff can mess you up.”

“Hmm yeah that sounds more like what we do. Minus the sex.” Ada said, her gut twisting uncomfortably.

“So you’re what? Like his dealer or something?” Cassandra was looking at her worriedly. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at her that way.

“Something like that”

“You seem really young to be getting involved with that kind of stuff. I’ve been clean for three months and I’m still all fucked up.” Maybe she could just try it. She didn’t need to bite her or anything. She could just make a small cut somewhere. Ok maybe she still had a few chemicals left in her system, but three months was long enough, right? And she just looked so glowingly healthy.

“I’m older than I look.” She grinned. Her decision made.

“Why are looking at me like that?” Cassandra asked.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to maybe go somewhere?” Ada asked. She shouldn’t be doing this. But she was so hungry and she smelled so good.

“Like where?”

“My place?” 

“Are you coming on to me?” Cassandra laughed nervously.

“Do you want me to?”

“I – I’ve never…”

“Don’t be frightened. It’ll be good, I promise.” She bit into her lower lip, until a single bead of blood stained them, before pulling her closer into a gentle kiss. It was only a few drops at most but the change in her was almost instant as the tension left her body, and the rush of it swept through her while she wrapped her arms around Ada’s waist and kissed her back,

“See, I told you it was good.”

“Wow. What was that? Did you slip me something?”

“If you come home with me I’ll give you more.” Ada said keeping a firm hold on girl’s hand and on her mind as they took the tube to Adam’s house.

“What a beautiful old house.” the girl exclaimed as they climbed the front steps, careful not to trip on the loose tiles that had come off the black and white chequered design.

“It’s a bit run down, but it’s home.” Ada said opening the front door. For a moment Cassandra hesitated to step over the threshold, as though a primal part of her mind knew that she was stepping into the lair of a deadly predator. Ada fed her a few more drops of blood dripping black from her tongue as they kissed and pulled her inside, leading her into the gloomy living room.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just stay still, and don’t make a sound.” Ada said, pulling her down onto the knole sofa brushing against her mind with her own, attempting to keep her calm even though her dead heart was racing. She was using everything, her mind and her voice, weak though they were. Control was key here, if she did this properly then the girl would wake up the next morning with no memory of what had happened. She only needed a pint or so, it wouldn’t hurt her. Who knew, it could even become a regular thing, once she had time to get used to the idea. It was all going so well until she opened the blade of her pen knife and sliced Cassandra’s wrist open.

“Jesus Christ, what are you doing?” Cassandra cried, her eyes widening in horror. Her scream was muffled as Ada forced a hand over her mouth while the other held wound against her lips holding her down with all her weight as she struggled.

“Just relax, it’ll all be over soon.” Ada sang softly, not only trying to calm her down but to keep her emotions in check. She could already feel her fangs protruding and the sick excitement at her own violence.

“What’s wrong with your face? What’s happening?” Cassandra whimpered under her. Why wasn’t it working? She had been so suggestable before, what was she doing wrong?

“Listen to me,” she whispered. “You were upset and a little drunk. I comforted you. We slept together. You feel a little confused about it but you’ll pass it off as harmless experimentation.”

“What? No!” she shouted, completely pushing her out as she attacked her mind. Then a look of realisation flashed across her face. “You drowned! You were dead! What the hell was that?”

“That was a dream. That was just a bad dream. You were remembering your friend who drowned in the swimming pool and you had a bad dream.” Ada continued, although it was useless. Cassandra looked up at her with horror. Something had gone terribly wrong and she no longer had control of anything and the urge to just give in, to slay, to bite brought the red to her eyes.

“How do you even know about that?” Cassandra was openly crying now. “No, you were there under the water, and you were so cold and then you…did something to me, you did something to my brain and I’ve been all wrong ever since. And now you’re making me do all this sick blood stuff with you? What the hell!” she screamed “Let go of me!”

“Be quiet!” before she even knew what she was doing she was dragging her across the room and down into the basement. Cassandra fought her with all her strength but she might as well have been struggling against a brick wall. In the darkness of the soundproofed room, running entirely on instinct, Ada sank her teeth into Cassandra’s carotid artery and drank.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ada looked over at the body again, silently hoping that she would show some signs of coming back, but knew that it was impossible. After a person’s heart stopped there was only a six minute window before their brain cells started dying. If they still hadn’t shown signs of turning during that period then they didn’t have a hope in hell, and Cassandra had definitely been dead for a while. She only hoped that she hadn’t suffered too much, that it had been quick, the thought of her slowly dying from blood loss was almost too much.

First things first, how to get rid of the body. Judging by the state of it, she had only been dead for a couple of hours so she didn’t have long. Call Adam again? No, what could he do? Find one of the others and ask for help. Definitely not. No, she didn’t need help. What did she know about the situation? She had run into her at the party, they had both left early, no one had seen them leave together as far as she knew. She had been living alone, house sitting for a friend since she had left James. She said she was leaving for America the next morning. That wasn’t completely hopeless. If Cassandra had been planning to leave the country that morning then it would take a while for people to realise she was missing. And if no one had seen them together, or witnessed them coming back to the house, then it was unlikely that anyone would come looking for her here. The trains had been quiet but someone might remember them, they would have stood out in their evening dresses and if they recognised her that could be a problem. She had to get rid of the body as soon as possible and then disappear for a while. 'A while' in these sorts of cases usually meant a couple of decades.

The easiest thing to do would have been to bury her in the back garden, but it was completely paved over out there and breaking the concrete in the middle of the night would attract attention. She suspected that there were probably already a few skeletons under that patio if it had been filled in so thoroughly. She might have been able to bury her on the Heath but even with her speed it would still take an hour or two for her to dig deep enough and if she didn’t get caught in the act then some dog walker would definitely find her the next morning.

Burning her was out of the question, it would only attract attention and unless she was able to find an industrial furnace it wouldn’t do a very good job. She could throw her in the river, that’s what they had done last time, but they would find her right away if she washed up on the bank. Besides, the Thames was a dangerous place for people like her. It marked the border between the rival gangs that ran the city and as a she was something of a lone wolf, an encounter with any of them could potentially be very dangerous. But if she was quick enough, then maybe, just maybe, she could get away with it.

The river then. It sickened her that she had become so callous, thinking only about her own survival. The girl hadn’t done anything to her, she hadn’t done anything to deserve this at all aside from having the misfortune of remembering who she was. But as she donned a pair of gloves and carefully dismembered the corpse, it shocked her how calm she felt. How rational. How quickly she had adapted to the situation. She shoved the remains, now in six pieces into two old labelled suitcases she found in the back of Adam’s wardrobe along with enough bricks and rubble from outside to weigh them down enough to sink to the bottom on the river.

She couldn’t exactly dwell on it. Cassandra might have been her first human kill, but she wasn’t the first death she had been responsible for. She had killed many a diseased vampire that was left to wander (perhaps deliberately) into her territory. And even before that, Adam and Eve might have tried their hardest to keep her away from that side of their world but in the end there was no escaping it. The blood in the refrigerator. The encounters with others. The time things had become desperate and she had fed them herself and how frightened she had felt cutting into her own flesh. And even before that, at the borstal where the beatings were dished out more often than the meals. There had always been violence. It didn’t escape her notice that she had essentially re-enacted her own death, this time casting herself as the murderer. The basement was generally the one room in the house she stayed away from, and yet here she was again, covered in blood, about to hide a body. What would Freud say about all this?

She did her best to wash herself upstairs with the freezing water from the rain tank and scrubbed her face and skin until they felt raw and the water was a disgusting rust red. Then she went to her old room and put on a gingham shirtdress, one of Adams old sweaters, and her school shoes. She didn’t have long until the sun came up. As an afterthought she picked up her chequebook, the last of her cash, and the passport Adam had given her for their planned trip to America and locked up the house.

The streets were mostly empty now in the eerie 4am dead zone before the early risers started to get up. She kept to the shadows as best she could until she reached Waterloo Bridge. It was clear, or at least she thought it was until she had reached the middle when a breeze flared up and the smell of them reached her nostrils, strong and rancid. There must have been ten, maybe even twelve of them, all male, all of them surprisingly well fed. They remained outside of the orange pools of lamplight but as they approached she caught a glimpse of a red pair of eyes here and there, or a moving shadow.

Aside from a few loners like herself there were three notable groups of vampires in London, and they were constantly at war with one another. The first had made their home in the catacombs of Highgate Cemetery and bore the closest resemblance to a traditional vampire family. They had been of the blood of Mara, although it had been diluted to the point of non-existence. In the last century they had ruled all of London but had mostly scattered to the winds five years ago when they had been discovered by some excitable teenagers. There was the Underground, a comparatively democratic collective who hid out in the abandoned tunnels and tube stations under the city and eked out a meagre existence on the homeless, runaways and prostitutes who were unlucky enough to be stuck on the streets at night.

Finally there were the Bedlam Boys who were mostly strays and a few newly turned. Their leader claimed to be a descendent of Cain, but no one could prove this. His name was Alexander but since none of his gang looked to be much older than sixteen at the point of their turning, the nickname Artful Dodger got thrown in his direction a lot. They behaved exactly how you’d imagine a gang of permanently teenaged boys who drank human blood to behave. Word was out that they tortured their victims and hunted trespassers on their territory for sport.

And now they were all around her, cutting off her way back. To anyone on the street they looked just like any other gang of youths, but she suspected that not even the police would be brave enough to go near them. Aside from looking the same age, there was nothing any of them had in common, some still short and boyish and others tall and gangly with hair in every shade and texture and skin in every colour. Their fashion sense was a little unusual, seeming to come from multiple time periods. Some of them wore flatcaps and braces, others had army jackets and greatcoats, a frayed school uniform or two, some wore leather, one of them wore a parka over a perfectly tailored houndstooth suit and a bowler hat.

Ada cursed herself for being so stupid, she might have been able to take on one on his own, but she was no match for a whole group of them, and she had feeling that if she tried to run she would be giving them exactly what they wanted.

The one in the bowler hat, the one she assumed was their leader, stepped forward. He looked a little older than the rest of them and his dark auburn hair made him stand out from the others.

“Nice night for it,” he said, coming closer. “Well blow me down, if we don’t have ourselves a celebrity in our midst. Look ‘ere lads, it’s only Adam’s little songbird.” The rest of the boys laughed. “Well ain’t you just a pretty deadly thing. And so young, too. You’re just a baby.” When she didn’t say anything he continued “So it’s true he finally did it. I didn’t think Adam had the balls. Which begs the question. Where’s daddy?”

“What do you want?” Ada said trying her best not to sound frightened.

“I could ask you the same question. The bridges is the neutral zones. It’s where we have a palaver. Peace talks and whatnot. So you could say once we caught the scent of you we came to talk peace.”

“I see.”

“I’m Alexander. Aleck to my friends. And you must be, the elusive Ada Young.” He took off one of his leather gloves and held out his hand. When she didn’t move to take it he shrugged and carried on “I’m glad we ran into you. This is most serendipitous. What’s in the bags?”

“None of your business,” she snapped.

“Smells good. Shame its dead or we could have all had a go, couldn’t we lads?” the group laughed and one of them made to grab one of the suitcase handles but she snatched i out of his reach.

“Don’t touch her!”

“Don’t need to, I can tell she was a pretty one." Aleck grinned "Now that would have been a sight for sore eyes, there’s not a price I wouldn’t pay to watch somefink like that. Were you trying to bring her back? Did you want to keep her? That sort of thing ain’t easy you know. Thing is, they’ve got to take it willingly at some point, and deep down they’ve got to want it.”

“I know.”

“Aww don’t be like that. What you going round killing pretty girls for anyway? Last I heard you’d taken up with a fancy man. Or did it not work out? I thought you was one of those pacifist types?”

“It was an accident. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“Well, perhaps you’re not used to having so much blood? Think of it this way. I assume you’ve been starving yourself since the beginning right? Well it’s like you’ve spent your whole life driving at ten miles an hour and then all of a sudden you just slammed the accelerator and now you’re swerving all over the place and hitting pedestrians. You’ve got to learn how to handle it. Adam should have taught you that, but knowing him he probably cries when he steps on a beetle.”

“Yeah well, he did his best, okay. Did it ever occur to you that he might be right not wanting to hurt people?” Why the hell was she defending that arsehole? But being judged by others, particularly those kinds of violent groups always rubbed her the wrong way.

“So, if you’ve fled from under Adam’s wing, and you’re not with the Underground, I take it that means you’re fair game.” Fair game?

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you joining our ranks. Being the Wendy to our Lost Boys, as it were.” Aleck explained and leaned against the metal railing of the bridge, looking across at the Houses of Parliament idly. 

“You’re joking.”

“Oh I’m deadly serious. We got all the blood you could ever want, and the only rule is there ain’t no rules. You can just drink and dance and fight and fuck until the end of time. We got everything south of the river here, from Kingston to Bromley all the way down to the fucking coast. Claimed it in the Battle of Brighton in ’64, we was feasting on Mods and Rockers for weeks afterwards. That’s how we got Gary here.” One of the more biker-ish ones waved at her bashfully. “So what do you say?” Was he actually being serious?

“Look, it’s a generous offer and I appreciate this whole quasi Clockwork Orange thing you lot are doing, it’s very cool, but I really don’t think I’d fit in.”

“Clockwork what?”

“Seriously, Anthony Burgess? They made a film based on it? Anyone?” it occurred to her that even though vampires possessed an almost eidetic memory it only applied to the things they paid attention to, which after a few jaded centuries ruled out nearly all pop-culture and current events.

“Anyhow, you might not meet all the membership criteria, granted, but we’re willing to make an exception for special cases and the like. And it’s been a long time since we had a girl over? One that could survive the night that is.”

“Yeah, I know what you do to women. It’s disgusting.”

“No different to what you just did. They’re just bloodbags and scumbags sweetheart.” She felt as though she was going to be sick, or pass out again, and she grabbed the raailing for support. “Oh no, don’t cry! Don’t cry. It’s not the end of the world. It’s always a bit scary the first time isn’t it. Why don’t you give her to me and let us take care of it.” he had put an arm around her shoulders in a way she really didn't like.

“What are you going to do?”

“Oh, you can rest easy, we’ll give her a respectful burial. And if you need a place to hide then look no further. Think of it as a gift.”

“That doesn’t sound like a gift. I’m going to have to respectfully decline.”

“Are you sure?" his jovial expression turned serious as though someone had flipped a switch inside him "We can’t let you dump her so close to our land, songbird. How do you think that would make us look? If we let you do it, then every poxy newborn in town is going to try it. I’d say you only have an hour before sunrise. That’s not enough time to do much of anything. We got ourselves a good system in these sorts of situations, so why don’t you just leave it to us.”

“What would I have to do?”

“I told you it’s a gift. You’re young but you’ve got some powerful blood in you. A lady of your standing demands respect. I would hope that in the future you remember who your friends are, and that you’ll think of us the next time you need something. You don’t have to do anything...this time. But, a little token of appreciation might be nice.” She had a fair idea of the kind of token they expected. Her blood could make them stronger, that was the real reason behind it all. It would connect them whether she joined them or not, and if he was skilled enough Aleck would probably be able to use that connection to track her down.

“Fine, just one of you though,” Ada said, unbuttoning her cuff and rolling up her sleeve.

“I think you’re going to have to do a little better than that.” She sighed and began to undo her collar.

“And no teeth, you just keep those things away from me,” she snapped as he leaned in and made a small cut near her collarbone with her pen knife. “Don’t stain my dress.”

“So bossy,” he laughed and once again leaned in to slowly lick the trail of dark blood at the nape of her neck all cold and slimy like a snail crawling over her skin. It was humiliating. Particularly as the others all jeered and laughed as he ran a hand up her bare thigh. She grabbed his wrist before he was able to reach up her skirt.

“Exquisite, as expected,” he whispered, still far too close. “Care to try some of mine?”

It was the last thing she wanted to do, but if he could track her down somehow then she wanted to be able to see him coming. She lifted his hand to her lips and sliced the blade down the length of his forefinger right where the median nerve should have been and felt a cruel satisfaction as he winced in pain. She took his finger into her mouth and sucked, hating how good he tasted. The rush of it and the lingering taste of Cassandra's blood made her want to use her teeth, to let him bite her, but that wasn't something you did with strangers.

"Look at you all worked up," he said looking a little flustered himself. "Are you sure you won't come home with us? We could see what else you can do with that mouth." for a brief moment she was tempted, but knew full well that 'playing Wendy' would involve a lot more than exchanging thimbles and acorns. Perhaps feeding too much really did make you peculiar.

"No." she finally answered, but she had taken too long and she worried that he would take that as some form of encouragement.

“Suit yourself. Don’t be a stranger now.” Aleck grinned and sauntered away into the shadows. “I’ll see you in my dreams.” As quickly as they had arrived the whole gang disappeared along with the suitcases, leaving her alone with the beginnings of sunrise.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 


	12. Bonus Chapter in memory of Anton Yelchin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short bonus chapter in honour of Anton Yelchin who sadly passed away yesterday.

**Detroit 2005**

 

“What is that thing?” said Adam scornfully. Ian looked back at the bright yellow Volkswagen Golf with confusion.

“Um, my mom’s car?” he replies. They called it the banana.

“Is that an answer or a question?” Christ the guy sounded like a teacher or something.

“An…answer?”

“Never mind, come in.”

Damnit, could he be any more of an idiot? But it was the middle of the night and he was super nervous and Adam, if that was even his real name, was kind of a scary guy. Not in an obvious way, he was thin as a rake and looked like some sort of sickly poet from the romantic era, but there was something about him that just freaked Ian out. Scary or not though, the guy was pretty fucking cool, no doubt about it. Like Jimmy Page at the height of his heroin addiction. Horrifying and badass all at the same time.

Despite having some major reservations, like who the hell pays someone five hundred dollars for what was essentially a delivery job, he had gone and picked up the guitar. When he got to the small music store, he had found that the Gibson was exactly what had been described, with no drugs or guns or weapon grade plutonium hidden inside it and aside from it costing nearly ten grand there was nothing weird about the transaction.  He had considered making off with the thing, it was worth a lot more than he was being paid after all and could easily have settled his current debt problem and then some. But something told him that he didn’t want someone like Adam as an enemy.

He got the guitar case out of the trunk and followed Adam up the front steps and into the house. The inside of the house, at least on the ground floor was pretty much as derelict as the outside. Books, boxes of wires, old computers and televisions and general debris littered the bare floorboards and the wallpaper had long since peeled off the walls. However once they got upstairs the actual living space made him gasp. It was cluttered and old but strangely inviting with worn Persian rugs and mouldering curtains. Rows and rows of guitars, violins, cellos, every stringed instrument imaginable lined the far wall, a drum kit in the corner, and a whole area decked out with vintage amps, reel to reel tape recorders and mixing consoles. All the recording equipment looked like it was at least fifty years old and Ian wondered if Adam was keeping everything analogue for aesthetic reasons like the White Stripes or if he simply couldn’t be bothered to the replace the old tech.

“Wow, nice place,” he blurted out.

“Soda?” Adam said offering him a can of Pepsi from some dark and hidden kitchen. It was covered in a thick layer of dust.

“Oh, thanks.” He wiped the can on his jeans before opening it. “So…uh, you’re like a musician then?”

“Well no shit Sherlock.” Adam said with a little huff of laughter, and a smile that felt all too brief. Then it clicked, the dark glasses, the guitar, the jacket, and the name on the cheque. He’d seen that face before.

“Wait I know you!” he cried, “Yeah, I thought I recognised your name. You did that album. What was it called? Analytical Engine! And that other one, the Ada Young album.” The smile quickly disappeared.

“I’m flattered that you think I was able to record an album when I was seven but the man you’re thinking of was my father, and he has regrettably passed on.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be, he was an arsehole.”

“Oh”

“Are you interested in music? That’s quite an obscure album. I didn’t even realise they released it over here.”

“Well there was a reference to it in a Blue Equinox song and it got me curious. I think that’s how a lot of people got introduced to it in the US.”

“Blue Equinox were a bunch of shysters.” Ian withered a little inside. Blue Equinox was his favourite classic rock band.

“You knew them?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Holy shit, like you knew Jim Green?”

“Yeah. Good guitarist, shitty human being. Sorry, how rude of me, I’m just picking apart all your musical heroes.”

“Hey, it’s ok, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.” 'Just play it cool, Ian.' he thought, 'don't be a stupid fanboy.'

“Now, let’s see this thing.” He opened the guitar case and appraised the thing approvingly, running his long fingers down the fretboard.

“Umm the guy said it wasn’t an L5, actually he didn’t really know what it was, maybe a custom job or a prototype, or a really good copy. But it’s pre-1920 for sure.” Ian repeated what the dealer had told him. Adam didn’t seem to be listening as he quickly tuned it and began to strum a few bars of a song he didn’t recognise.

“I see, did you keep the receipt?” Adam asked, continuing to play.

“Yeah, here.”

“That’s not as much as I expected.” He said stopping briefly to look it over.

“There was no provenance so that brought the value down.”

“I feel like I’m stealing it for that price. She’s very old.” It was a girl now?

“That sounds pretty good.” Ian commented, thinking Adam had written it.

“Yeah, it’s so bright, almost not sustain at all, this is exactly the sound I’ve been looking for.”

“Uh, actually I meant the song.”

“Oh. Thank you. My daughter wrote it for me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s called I Hate You and You Ruined my Life.”

“That’s harsh, dude.” Adam really didn’t look old enough to have a kid that would write something like that, unless he got some girl pregnant in high school or something which seemed unlikely. Maybe the British accent was just fooling him into thinking he was all fancy, and Adam was just as white trash as the rest of them, or whatever they called it in England.

“Not really. It’s the truth.” He stopped playing abruptly, ending the conversation. “I think I’ll keep it. Good job Ian.”

“Um...thanks.”

“This is entirely your decision, so no pressure or anything, but would you be willing to do some more jobs for me?”

“I – Really?”

“Of course. It’ll all be legal and above board, I need a PA of sorts, someone to run my errands for me when I’m working. Would you be interested?”

“Sure. I can do that.”

“But, I can’t have you driving that thing here all the time, I’m going to have to buy you a new one.

"Seriously?"

"If you want to keep working for me then yes."

“Um, ok,” Ian replied, not entirely sure if it was a good idea.

Adam paid him the five hundred dollars in cash and then gave him another thousand. Ian had never held that much money in his whole life.

“Go on Autotrader or something. Get yourself something second hand and nondescript, preferably in dark grey or black. I don’t want to see that car here again.”

“Ok. Do you, um, need anything else?”

“Not right now. Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yeah.” The thought of Adam phoning his house and talking to his mother, or worse his grandma, was completely mortifying.

“Good. Give me your number, I’m afraid I will have to pay you in cash on a job by job basis.”

“That’s fine.”

“And I need you to sign this non-disclosure agreement. I’m sorry, I’m sure you’re a good kid and everything but I can’t take any risks.” Why would he need to sign an NDA when all he was doing was running errands? He read it over, noting that Adam’s identity, location, work, business transactions, and all conversations between them would have to be legally confidential. Damn, he had a cool musician boss and he couldn’t even tell anybody about it.


End file.
